Lose the Road
by tempest-races
Summary: Human life is made up of choices. Yes or no. In or out. Then there are the choices that matter. Love or hate. To be a hero or a coward. To fight or give in. To live. Or die. Live or die. That's the important choice, and its not always in our hands.
1. Introduction

**Author**: Tempest-Races  
**Title:** Lose the Road**  
Disclaimer:** All characters from The Fast and the Furious belong to Universal Studios and their subsidiaries and any other original copyright holders. New characters found here belong to me. I do this for love, not money, and no profit will be made from this story.  
**Summary:** Two years ago she ran from a hurt worse than she ever knew the human heart was capable of taking. She's all put back together now, but how long will she be able to stay that way when circumstances pull her back into the life she was so sure she'd left behind? **Rating: **Very, Very M, I have no doubt. **Feedback:** Yes please! I'm incredibly tough so there's no need to be gentle. Please be perfectly honest with me. The pickier you want to be with me the better. But just letting me know what you think is ok too.  
**Warning: **This story is not meant to be taken seriously. Doing so may prove hazardous to your brain. This story is an action film. It doesn't have to make sense. I may, despite my absolute best efforts not to, forget something I put into writing in the 250,000 word monstrosity the last 'book' was. If I do that, and I realize I'll likely fix it. But you know how in a long running TV show they sometimes contradict something they said in season one? Well, its kinda like that!

Ok, so I suppose this story needs some introduction. It is part two of 'Funeral of a Good Girl'. Basically, both stories are 'written' in 2001. The first story was, as someone pointed out, Tempest remembering what happened in the summer of 1999 when she went to visit Jesse.

So, now it's 2001. And we all know what happened in 2001 don't we? The first Film. So now when Tempest gets a call as the only family Los Angeles knows Jesse has who isn't on the run from the law or in jail, what will she do when she finds herself dragged kicking and screaming back into Jesse's world?

Part one was necessary so we all know why she doesn't want to go back anywhere near Jesse's world.

I must warn you, this story is going to be where I attempt to do something I'm actually very against. I'll be taking film two and basically disregarding canon and using it however I wish. There will be no Rome. There will be Brian. The basic plot line of film two will be worked into this story, but not exactly as it appeared on screen. I'm hoping that it will be far enough removed from how film two actually went that no big fans of film two will be disappointed but I need Brian and the events of the second movie to lead me to where I wish this second story to end.

Movie three will not exist. It was ok, but really it had nothing to do with The Fast and the Furious. The only thing me disregarding it means is Dom never went to Japan and that doesn't even mean there can't be Han someday since Dom doesn't go to Japan until after he's known Han in L.A. and Han is already dead anyway.

I must confess that in all likelihood film 4 won't exist in this world either. I do have a film 4 plot bunnie kicking around my head but... Who knows. This story and finishing Catalyst will certainly be my priorities for the near future at least.

With that out of the way, onto Chapter one of Lose the Road!


	2. So Damn Relentless

**Lose the Road**

By –_Tempest Races_

**Chapter One – **So Damn Relentless

"_**Well, I'm running back and forth from here to South Carolina, wishing you were here. I guess I should watch what I wish for."**_

"Hey Trouble! You gonna come get this work order or stand there all day with your keys in your hand daydreaming?"

Her boss's call snapped Tempest out of her reminiscing. She shook her head. Two whole years had gone by since the day _he'd_ broken her heart and she'd run away from the whole situation. And not a day went by she didn't hate herself for her inability to let it go. Let him go. Move on. Find someone else. Get on with her life. Forget those two weeks.

_Forget him_.

For heaven's sake, it had only been two weeks. Two weeks was _nothing_. The time she had even known with him had been such a tiny fragment of her life. So why couldn't she get on with her life without him in it? She shouldn't have known him well enough to miss him so much. But she missed how he did _everything_, every day. The way her coworkers had all latched onto the nickname 'trouble' didn't help, because they didn't _say_ it _right_, and it wasn't for _them_ to say. As soon as her car had showed up sporting licence plates front and rear with the word on them, the name had stuck and she couldn't escape it. Not without revealing why she wanted to. _Had_ to. In California, it had been something only _he_ had called her. It had been like everyone else knew it was really only for him anyway, no matter how well it suited.

But at home, hardly anyone knew about him and that was how she liked it. She certainly wasn't going to go into the situation with 'her boys' at work. She simply wouldn't watch both pity and distain fill their eyes when they looked at her. Pity for her having lost the only man she figured she'd ever love, and distain for the woman who'd been so weak to allow herself to be found in that position in the first place. Because at the end of the day, men didn't cry and they didn't pine. Men sucked it up and got on with their lives, they just moved on from horrible, terrible loss. Even though they didn't, not really, they acted like they did, made it seem like they did. So, so did she. Because at the end of the day, her life wasn't her life if she couldn't live it as 'just one of the guys' at work, no matter how close to ending her life was at home, when her idle hands made her mind think of the devil's work.

So she'd spend a week with Angelo, driving straight into Toronto instead of going home, and calling work to tell them something had come up and that she'd be late getting back. And she'd tried to get all her sadness over the situation out there with Angelo so she wouldn't have to bring it home with her. It had taken him the whole week to hear the story and put her back together. She was no longer broken, just fractured and stress cracked.

"I'm comin' already. Shit! Who pissed in your cornflakes?" She unlocked her toolbox quickly and started toward the open window behind which was the office of the controller of the shop, who was waving the paper detailing her first job of the day.

"Women!" was the only answer she got. She was used to it.

"Men! Without a woman to do their thinkin' for them, they'd try to breath and walk at the same time and drop dead."

"Yeah, yeah. That car isn't going to fix itself."

"I know that." She rolled her eyes. "If they could fix themselves, _you'd_ be able to do my job."

"Just shut up and get to work already."

"Funny, when I look around this big cement room with all the hoists in it, I figure I'm already at work."

"You're some funny." Grant, her boss, pointed out the door. "Go get the car and figure out why it has no headlights."

"When did I become your electrical tech? Driveability, hello?" After building her Skyline with Leon and Jesse, she had finally decided what kind of work she wanted to specialize in. Keeping cars running at their peak. No more front end or brake work for her. She was well on her way to starting her engine courses so she could take over for Mike, the current engine tech, when he retired. Building engines and tuning them was where she wanted to be now. But finding electrical glitches, unless she was finding them over Leon's shoulder while he did all the work, wasn't where her interests lay.

"You became electrical when Randy took the week off."

"Sweet fuckin' Christ. No one else can do this dumb ass shit?"

"Listen, you deal with more electrical doing driveability than anyone else does doing front end, trans, trim or general ok? So you are my electrical tech as well as my driveability tech for the week. Suck it up, unbunch your panties, and get to work. Unless you discovered a desire to go back to doing oil changes, brakes and tires?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love you too Grant." She made a kissie face his way before strutting out the door. They were all very fond of each other. Not that you'd know it by looking around at them working. She pulled the disabled car into her bay, grabbed a test light, multimeter, and trouble light and started checking wires. She was upside down in the driver's seat, her head wedged under the consol near the pedals as she ohmed out the wires from the headlight switch when she heard her name called over the PA system. "Tempest James, telephone line eight please."

"Son of a fuckin' cock suckin' whore!" she called as she started to untangle herself from the floorboard of the Impala she was working on.

"I don't know how you manage to bend yourself like that," her co-worker, Zakk, said on a laugh as he watched her swing her sock feet over the headrest of the seat and out the door so she was once again orientated the right way up. Most people crouched in the open door. She got on her back on the floorboards, feet stuck up over the seat and ended up bent like an S. She found it gave her more ability to see what she was doing. But that didn't mean she liked doing it.

Tempest crammed her feet back into her work boots and stood up with a sigh. "I'm flexible. And no, that's not an invite for you to find how just how flexible, and yes, it does make for some interesting evenings."

"You sure do know how to take all the fun out of things," Zakk teased her ability to take the wind out of their sails before they could take what she said ass backwards and tease her with it.

"I've got instincts like a cat for what'll come out of your mouths next. Bunch of dirty minds. I blame testosterone and penises for it all." Tempest called over her shoulder as she started toward the phone perched on the parts window.

"You'd be a lot less happy if the world didn't have testosterone and penises!" Zakk called back.

"That's why god made ice-cream and vibrators my friend." Sometimes what came out of her mouth shocked even her, but she never let on. Part of being treated like just another one of the guys was acting like just another one of the guys. She picked up the phone and hit the button for the appropriate line. "Service, Tempest here."

"Hola chica. How's?"

"Hector? How the heck did you get this number?" _Or remember who the hell I am. And decide to call me up at nine am, which is like five am where you are._

"Got the name of the place you work at from Harry and the number on the internet."

"I see." True to his word, Harry had often helped her get parts for her car she couldn't get herself. He shipped them to her business address because it was cheaper, and it saved her dragging them from home to the shop. "What can I do for you man?"

"I," Hector took a deep breath and the pause in conversation carried a tension Tempest could sense, even from over three thousand miles away. "This line safe to talk on?"

"Dude, we're a car dealership. I don't think CSIS is tapping our lines."

"But no one else in the building is listening?"

"Naw. Once you're on the line if you try to pick up the same number the phone just beeps at you. What'd you need?"

"Girlie, there's no easy way to tell you this." Hector sighed. "There was an accident. A bad accident."

"What happened?" Her stomach felt like it was in her feet at Hector's announcement.

"I can't go into it. I don't know enough about what went down to go into it. All I know is that Harry told me to call you and tell you about Jesse."

"What about Jesse?" She'd talked to her cousin only the day before yesterday. He'd been fine. Happy and full of plans for what he was going to do with the Jetta in the next six months before his dad got out of jail. He'd been _fine_. Full of his plans for the dessert show, Race Wars, that he couldn't get out of his system until it was done and dusted.

What could have happened to him in two days to make Hector sound so upset? And why was Hector the one calling her? Where the fuck was Leon? They still spoke all the time. Leon had planned to come visit her. They were still best friends, even though they hadn't seen each other in two years. It made no sense for Leon not to be the one telling her if something had happened to Jesse. Or Mia, or Letty. Or, horror of horrors, Vince. Not that she'd spoken to him since the day she'd run out of California. But, as a last resort he was still a more logical choice of who would call her than Hector. Dominic, much as they didn't really get along, made more sense than Hector. Why wasn't one of the extended 'family' calling her to tell her about her cousin? Why was it a virtual stranger? She waited to get an answer to both her spoken question and unspoken ones.

"Tran did a drive by on Dom's and shot the place up. Jesse got caught in the fire. He's in the hospital. Saint Francis. It's not great Tempest. They think he'll make it. But they don't know for sure and they can't say what kind of damage he'll have, if he recovers. Shit I'm sorry to be the one tellin' you this when you're so far away. But," Hector seemed to need another moment to collect his thoughts. "Well, I don't know exactly what happened, but the rest of the team bailed."

"Bailed? As in Jesse is in the hospital all alone after being shot? No doubt because of something that idiot Dominic Toretto did in the first place?" Tempest started to get more wound up and worked up the more she thought about it. So that was why no one she knew well had called to break the news. They were all gone. And not so much as a word out of any of them. Leon, who still professed to miss her, love her like the sister she always should have been to him in the first place. Mia, who still tried to reconcile her with Vince every time they spoke. Letty, who still bemoaned with a laugh how few people could put Dominic in second place, and make him humble for a few days at a time at least whenever she e-mailed. She wasn't exactly close to any of them now, save Leon and Jess. But they knew each other. It didn't sit right that she was getting this news from Hector. A mere acquaintance.

"I dunno about any of it girl. Just that yes, Jesse is alone right now. I thought you should know."

"Yeah, thanks Hector. Thanks for takin' the time to call." She hung up and stood staring at the phone in shock for several moments. So now what? She was still over three thousand miles and about thirty straight hours of driving away. And short of calling the hospital and pretending to be his sister, she had no way of getting any further information about what exactly was wrong with her cousin. 'Shot' covered a sweet lot of territory. She looked down at her hands and they were shaking. She made twin fists to try and control it. Even to her, her fists looked small and ineffectual. With her cousin lying perhaps dying in a hospital so far away, she felt like a tiny speck of dust in the middle of no where. She felt miniscule. Inconsequential.

Something wasn't right here. Why had the rest of the team bailed? Why had Leon? Leon was Jesse's best friend. And Tempest knew Leon thought it his responsibility to look out for Jesse. It just didn't sit right that Leon would do something so callus as to leave Jesse alone and maybe dying in the hospital. If he had, he would have had one hell of a good reason. And he, to Tempest's way of thinking, would have shared that reason with _her_ somehow, some way. He would have called her. He would have wanted her to be there for Jesse. He wouldn't have wanted her to worry about him. He wouldn't have wanted her to worry about _him_ either. And he would know she would never ask after his health, or even bring up his name. So Leon would offer the information, knowing that refusing to ask for it didn't mean she didn't want to know. Didn't mean she didn't _need_ to know. Something was fishy. And the only way she was going to be able to get on with her life was to go to California and find out first hand what was going on.

And that opened up whole new set of problems. She'd need a few weeks off, minimum. That wasn't such a big deal. She hadn't used any vacation time in two years. There had hardly been much point. So she knew that Grant would let her take off for two or three weeks if she needed to, no questions asked. But she still had to get to California. And something told her, some instinct she possessed for the clandestine even though her life was very straight forward and law abiding most days, told her that it would be better if no one knew she was there. Not her family, not her coworkers, not the authorities of either country.

And to pull that off there was only one person she knew of to ask for help. And even though she'd told Hector the line was safe, and was reasonably sure she hadn't lied, she couldn't make the kinds of requests she had to make over a phone line. She headed straight out of the shop and into her manager's office. She sat down in one of his chairs and waited for him to look up. She tried, for once, to let her distress show on her face. When he looked up and did a double take, she guessed she'd done a better job than she'd even imagined. "I need a few weeks off."

"Just like that?" he asked. His normally stalwart, unflappable technician was ghost pale, slightly shaking, and her voice was low. She looked as if she was in shock. And given how hard it was to shake her most days, it bothered him.

"I just got a call. My best friend in Toronto is hurt. He needs me."

"You need a few weeks off to go to Toronto?"

"That's what I said. Listen, I'm holdin' it together by a thread here. Can I go or not?"

"Randy's already on vacation."

"I'm not asking for vacation. I'm tellin' you that my best friend, who's got no one else in the world, is hurt and needs me. Cam can handle the electrical end of things. He's good enough. I need to do this."

Whatever her boss saw on her face must have been enough to sell her seriousness. "Ok, get outta here. Finish whatever you were in the middle of first though. An hour won't kill you."

"Fine." She was so happy to be allowed to go without threatening to quit, fixing the lights of the Impala wasn't too much to ask. She found the broken wire and repaired it in record time before heading around to her car and tearing off for home. The second she was in the door she had the phone to her ear and her suitcase open on her bed.

"Hello?"

"Mom, it's me. I gotta go to Toronto."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that. Angelo. He needs me. I need to drop the dog off at your place because as soon as I'm done packin' I'm headed for Ontario."

"Is everything ok?"

"Yeah. He's just been hurt is all. Needs my help. 'Sides, I haven't seen him in a year and I haven't had any time off in two."

"I know. But it's such a hurried thing. And the way you're talking is bothering me. Are you sure everything's ok?"

She couldn't tell her mother about Jesse until she knew more. She didn't have any details and she'd just be worrying her mother for no good reason. "Fine. Other than Angelo. You know I worry about him."

"Ok, if you're sure everything is ok. Just leave Sam in the house and I'll keep him as long as you need me to."

"Great. Mom, you're a star. I'll call you when I get there."

"Ok, be careful."

"Ok." Tempest clicked her cordless off and tossed it on the bed. She randomly shoved clothes into her bag and hit the door running. Her Skyline and RX-7 were still in her mother's garage. Neither was insured until the next day, and the RX-7 never had been rebuilt anyway, but she couldn't very well take her Altima. It was too slow to get her there in the kind of time frame she was thinking. But her Skyline was far too unmistakable to be the vehicle she picked for something like this.

She'd thought about starting to tear down the engine of the 7 several times and then something else with the Skyline had always taken her attention. Even though she still found it hard to drive the Skyline. He was in everything inside. The seats, the doors, the very stereo that played the soundtrack to her life, all of it was because of him.

She threw her bags into the back of the Altima with a sigh. It'd have to do. At least it would blend in. Well, as well as any car of hers ever would. It's vanity plate read trblsm2 and everyone who knew her knew that the Skyline was Trouble, but the Altima was troublesome too, with her behind the wheel. She slammed the trunk closed, ran her dog across the street and let him into his 'grandmother's' house and cooed good-bye for a few moments. He'd have a great time dominating her mother's dog and making her life hell for the few weeks she was gone. He'd miss her, but he'd be ok.


	3. Head's a Mess

AN: I suppose I should point out that the chapter titles and quotes under them will be coming out of songs that I either just feel suit the tone of the chapter or helped inspire the story. The first chapter, since I didn't point it out, was Nothing Could Come Between Us by Theory of a Deadman. This chapter's comes from Drink Me by Anna Nalick. Enjoy.

**Lose the Road**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 2 – **Head's a Mess**

"_**And she's lost like Alice, in a painted past."**_

An hour after she'd left work, she was on the road toward Borden, and leg one of her journey. She was actually going to Ontario. She had to run the situation by Angelo before she did anything on her own. He was the expert. Other than stopping for the restroom and caffeine, she didn't stop or slow below one hundred and eighty kilometres per hour. Other than at those rare times when her radar detector told her that she had better slow down, or find herself in a cop situation she couldn't get out of by flashing a little cleavage. She hit the 401 running and didn't stop until she pulled up to the gate of Angelo's house.

He worked from home, so she was betting he was there. He rarely left his house for any amount of time. She buzzed the house from the gate. No one said anything, the gate just slid open. She was betting this meant Angelo had checked the screen himself, seen who was at his gate, and knew without a word being said that if she was showing up at his place out of the blue practically in the middle of the night, it was serious. She pulled up to the front door and got out of her car. The front door of the house opened right after she slammed the door of the Altima.

"Angelo!" The word, said with an Italian accent, sounded totally different than when she said his name. "What are you doing here mia bella?"

"Yesterday I got a phone call from California." Tempest started to explain. And then the tears started and she couldn't stop them. She stood on his front step and sobbed as she tried to find the words to tell him about the phone call. About the worry for Jesse. And about the worry over why Leon and the others took off without so much as a 'fare thee well'.

"Ah, mia angelo, what is wrong?" He took hold of her and rubbed her back. "Tempest, it can't be this bad."

"That bald idiot got Jesse shot!" Tempest answered, her words leaving her chest on halting, shuddering sobs. "And then he took off and now Jesse is in a hospital all alone shot and maybe dying and when Hector called he didn't know anything and I think there's more trouble that Hector didn't tell me about so I couldn't take the Skyline because I'll be seen from ten miles away and I need to go down there but it's gonna take forever and I don't know what's going on! And its Jesse," she finally had to stop for air.

She only rambled on so when she was really upset. Angelo was worried about the whole situation. "Well, there is only one solution my angel. You'll simply have to fly down."

"Uh-uh. I don't want any record of me going into the states. I have to drive and I have to go over at some unmanned crossing too. That's why I'm here." She started to get a hold on herself. "I want you to get me a fake identity and fake papers for the car. I just got a feeling that it's better if no one knows who I am or why I'm there."

"Perhaps you better come inside and tell me exactly what this Hector person told you." With an arm around her shoulders, he led her into the house. They sat together in his den and Tempest relayed all the information she had. "So you drove straight from work to here without a rest?" Angelo asked incredulously.

"Well yeah," Tempest answered as if that answer was the most rational thing she could have said. "I was only at work for a few hours before Hector called. I need to get down there Angelo. You must see that."

"Eight further hours will not change anything. You will go sleep while I gather the documents and information you will need."

"I can't go sleep. I can't take eight hours to sleep while Jesse might be dying all alone Angelo!"

"If you get in a wreck on the way down there because you haven't slept in close to four days, what good will you be to Jesse then?"

"Had to be the voice of fuckin' reason, didn't you?" Tempest grumbled even as she stood up to do what he said.

"It will take me the better part of this time just to organize everything that you will require. So go, sleep. Everything will be ready for you to depart when you wake up."

She reached up to kiss his cheek tiredly. "Thank you for being such a good friend, Angelo. If I didn't have you to turn to, I'd be falling to pieces."

"It's what friends are for. Now go, sleep." He watched her quit the room before turning to the bookcase at the far end of the room. He always felt a bit like he was living in a spy novel when he did so, but he pulled on one of the books on the third shelf and a secret door opened in the paneling of the room. It revealed a room with only a simply light and a state of the art computer system.

When the law and government of your country told you that you were no longer permitted to own a computer or use the internet, but being an elite hacker was all you knew, you found a way to have a computer without the law or government knowing about it. In order to safely send his Tempest into the USA, there were a lot of layers to weave into a seamless cloak of shadows.

First, she would need a clean vehicle that could never be traced to her. One that would be fast enough to suit her, and one that would keep her safe enough to suit him. The midnight blue Escalade in his garage would do nicely. After all, she had been the one to improve its performance with various upgrades and modifications. But it would require new serial numbers, licence plates, and registration papers she could use when she arrived in L.A.

A little digging on the internet and his memory had been refreshed. Her cousin had settled in New Mexico originally upon moving to the USA. Angelo's fingers flew over the keys as he worked. There were many scripts and algorithms that many people would have been using, but he preferred to do everything manually. Slowly, he pealed back the layers of security until he was into the main computer system housing the social security numbers of all US citizens. He had to route his connection through many other servers for many businesses in many other countries to hide his tracks fully. All those steps, each one a minor hack on its own, took time. Very few hackers in the world were good enough to be where he was right now, and he knew if any security organization managed to follow his trail back to even Ontario, he was going to have a very hard time convincing his parole officer that he'd had nothing to do with the hack, if it was ever discovered.

There were only a handful of blackhat crackers at the tier one level in the world, let alone in North America. But he hadn't gotten to the level he had because he often got caught. Since the one time he had, and had gone down hard for the trouble, he had become doubly careful. Expertly, he added a record for one Jessica Adams into the system and assigned her a SSN number and past. Immigrated to the USA at six years old with her mother and twin brother Jesse. He was sure that Tempest would appreciate the effort. He hoped she would. Hiding the new identity took a lot of work. Not done carefully and exactly and it was one of the easiest forms of identity theft to find. Of course, he wasn't stealing anyone's identity. He was creating a fresh one. He still felt the weight of Tempest's personal safety weighing heavily on him the whole time he was working over his keyboard.

He buried this identity behind several layers of security hoping that if anyone or any agency started to catch on to Tempest's story not adding up, it would take them that much longer to unravel the truth. With her instinct for trouble, it should give her enough time to make an escape. Deciding it would be too obvious if he set it up as if Jessica also lived in L.A., he registered the Escalade with the DMV of New Mexico. A few keystrokes later and he had fake paperwork for the truck, including fake insurance out of New Mexico in the name of Jessica Adams. A few phone calls later and he had licence plates and VIN placards for it on the way. He easily created fake credit cards in the assumed identity, and added a driver's licence from her new 'home state' to round it out.

Satisfied he was giving her the best chance of not being caught that he could, he shut down his PC and left the room, ensuring it was locked up behind him. In all the whole process had only taken him three hours. He lay down on the couch in his den. Why the subterfuge in the first place? Her cousin was hurt and she was rushing to his side. It didn't require that no one knew she was even there, as she seemed to feel it did. No one would question her presence at her cousin's side when he was sick in the hospital and had no one else.

When things got this hectic in his life, it was then that he really missed being able to load a game of Unreal and frag the shit out of something. But he couldn't waste time on his computer gaming. Not anymore. If anyone came along and by some twist of fate caught him on a computer, it was back to jail for him. And as he still made a very good living with his computer, albeit under the radar with many, many safety and security measures, he wasn't willing to risk losing it all over a video game. He wouldn't be going back to jail any time soon if he could help it. It hadn't agreed with him at all. He kicked back to catch a nap before his friend arrived with the new parts for the Cadillac and he had to get back to work. Leave it to the tempestuous one to show up at eleven o'clock at night, necessitate three hours of computer work, and leave him too worked up to sleep, despite the fact it was two am.

Before his cell phone rang and announced the arrival of the things for the transformation of his truck—which was what he had assumed would wake him—he was woken by the arrival of Tempest crawling onto the couch with him. He sighed. "It's not Jesse that has you this upset, is it mia angelo?" She didn't answer him, only shook her head no in the dark. "I thought this Hector person told you the others all ran off at the first sign of trouble."

"He did."

"So, you don't need to worry about running into him, then do you?"

She didn't need to ask him to clarify who 'him' was. "No, I guess not."

"But the thoughts of it still worry you."

It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact so she didn't answer. "Two years later and I'm no more over it now than I was the day after it happened."

He wrapped his arms about her, and pulled her back against him. There was nothing but comfort in the gesture. There was nothing but the comfort of a very long friendship between them. "He's not there my angel," he muttered into her hair. "There is nothing to worry about. The only thing which will be required of you in California is to be there for your Jesse."

"That's worse. It's horrible that they all left him alone and hurting. And I _want_ to see him. I know I should hate him. I know seeing him again is the last thing I should want. But it's not. The chance just to see him again almost made me want this trip, no matter what precipitated it. Just to see what he looks like now. Just to find out what he's like now. To see what changes two years brought. He's two years older now than he was then."

"So are you my angel." He sighed with a frown. "He was a fool to let you go. But men are often fools. He became a stupid fool when he not only let you go but didn't come after you once he came to his senses. You, my angel, can do better than a stupid fool." She started to cry. Great racking sobs that shook her frame against him. "Shush angel."

"What if he's with someone else, and I'm still stuck here, loving him?"

"Mia bella, it hardly matters, does it? He has, as the cowardly fool he is, run off with the rest of his friends. If there was another woman, he left her all alone just as he left you those years ago and just as he has left Jesse now. Angel, you must focus on yourself and your Jesse, yes?" He held her while she sobbed for another few minutes before, with a deep shuddering breath, she composed herself. She simply lay quietly breathing deeply for another few minutes.

"You're right, as per usual," she answered. "You know what's ruined for me now?"

"No, what?" There was laughter barely restrained in her voice as she asked the question. Her rapid change in demeanour didn't bother him. She could be like that while stressed. Having known her since she was fifteen, he was well versed in the many moods of Tempest, and how quickly they shifted.

"AC/DC. I use to love AC/DC. But he's in a band and they play a lot of AC/DC. I can't hear Back in Black without thinking of him playing the guitar for Back in Black. AC/DC is dead to me now."

"That's hardly a loss." He'd never developed a taste for heavy rock. Or her 'hip hop'. It was all musical garbage to him. Lack talent tripe that all sounded the same.

She laughed uproariously. "I'm sorry they're not as refined as Frank Sinatra."

"You, my angel, never had much taste in music. Nothing much has changed."

"This is gonna be ok right? Going down there is the only thing I can do, right?"

"Going to Jesse is the only thing you can do, yes. And I'm sure it will be fine. In fact, I don't understand why you feel the need to cloak yourself so well just to rush to the side of an injured relative."

"I don't understand it either. But something makes me feel like it's the only way to go."

"Ok. So be it."

Before she could answer, the phone rang two short rings, signalling someone was buzzing the gate. "Who'd be here buzzing at this hour?"

"I will go find out." Angelo crawled off the couch, over the prone body of his friend, and turned the TV on to show the camera at his gate. He picked up the phone and buzzed the person in.

"Who's that?"

"That is the friend of mine who's going to help me outfit your ride with the appropriate serial numbers and licence plates. Now, you go back to bed. It's two am. By the time six am comes along, you will be all rested and your vehicle will be all ready for the road. Now go."

"I'll try to get more sleep. But I'll try right here."

Sensing she simply didn't want to be too far away from human companionship, he let it go and headed out to the garage to meet his friend.


	4. Big Girl World

**Lose the Road**

By – _TempestRaces_

**Chapter 3** – Big Girl World

"_**It's a big girl world now, full of big girl things. And every day I wish I was small."**_

When they finished up and he came back inside, Tempest was still asleep on the couch. It was just turned five, and he decided that another few hours would kill no one. He left her sleeping after tossing a light blanket over her body. When seven came, he knew if he didn't wake her up and send her on her way, she'd fillet him alive for his efforts. He shook her shoulder gently. "Mia Angelo, it is time to wake up."

"Wha?" she murmured sleepily, rubbing her eyes with the sides of her balled fists.

"It's gone seven. You'll want to be on your way."

"I wanna sleep," she sighed petulantly.

"You always wish to sleep more when first woken Tempest. But you wanted to be on your way last night without even taking a rest. And now that I've made you rest longer than you intended, when the time truly sinks in, you'll be angry to have waited even this long. So wake up, my angel, and get ready to finish your trip." There was no one on earth who knew her as well as he did. Not her Jesse, not her mother, not even herself. He understood her nature and her mind so well sometimes it scared him. He knew she didn't even ascertain just how well he knew her. She had no secrets from him. Even if she wanted to, she could not. But he had her pegged in this at least, and it was time to get her on her way. She was in for a rough time, a long drive to find out how badly hurt her much loved and revered cousin was.

She sat up with a sigh. "The car is ready to go?"

"Your vehicle is prepared, yes. I've taken the liberty of putting your baggage into it."

"You're a star Angelo. I mean it."

"I know you do and I know I am. I wish I could go with you Tempest. You know this?"

"I know. But you might get caught. And if you get caught out of the country without permission, that's the end of you. You can't handle going back to jail, and I can't handle another period of time in my life without you in it. So you gotta stay here. It's ok though. I'll be ok."

"I don't doubt it. Go, find your cousin and reassure yourself that everything is going to be fine. Come home this way, and fill me in on everything. And keep your phone with you. If you need anything, call me. Right away, no matter the time. Yes?"

"For sure."

They headed for the front door of the sprawling house. Angelo pulled it open and ushered her onto the front step with a hand on the small of her back.

"Uh-huh," she uttered inarticulately, shaking her head no from side to side. "No way."

"Yes way."

"I'm not driving that huge monstrosity across two countries."

"It's only one, really. You won't be driving across enough of Canada in it for it to count."

"Angelo! It's a fuckin' Cadillac Escalade. I might as well hang a huge 'hey, look at me' sign around my neck."

"Perhaps on your island that would be true. But in the rest of the world, especially Los Angeles, the truck will not be out of place. You'll be comfortable and safe in it and I won't have to worry about that decade old car of yours breaking down on the way."

"I'm equipped to fix my _six_ year old car if it breaks down, and I can't afford to put gas in a damn Escalade the whole way across the USA."

"There is a gas card in the truck. Use it until you get within one state of California and then start using these." He handed her the credit cards and ID of Jessica Adams.

"Jessica Adams?"

"Your temporary identity. His twin sister. I thought you would approve. Of course you share his birthday. A history is set for you. You've lived in New Mexico your whole life. You work from home as a freelance designer. You couldn't get away from a huge project the day you heard about Jesse, but you came as soon as you could. The Visa card has no limit, nor does the Master Card. They're real enough. You can discard them once you're on your way home. You'll have to stop someplace hidden a state away and swap out the Massachusetts tags for these New Mexico plates. And again on the way home. Switch to the gas card I've left you on the way home too. Cut the cards with Jessica's name on them into pieces the minute you're outside of California. The ID too. The back seat of the truck will fold down. Should you need to rest, you can nap in the back for a time at a rest stop. It also has a concealed compartment in the driver's foot well. There is a 9mm hidden there. I want you safe."

He was rapidly taking away everything she could use to object to taking his truck. "It's too damn slow."

"You made sure it was not 'too damn slow' the week after I bought it. Remember?"

Yes she did. They had spent the whole week upgrading it. High flow exhaust, K&N cold air intake system, chipped ECU, the works. It was pretty quick, as far as Cadillac Escalades went. She sighed. "I'm not getting out of here in my own car, am I?"

"Your own car isn't prepared. It would take many more hours to get another set of VIN numbers for a Nissan. The Escalade is fully fuelled, totally incognito, fast enough to get you there, and safe enough to make me happy. Take it and go. I've left a map programmed into the nav system to show you where you'll need to cross the border. The radar detection system is fully functional and totally integrated with the GPS. It will show you any police presence along your route miles before they can become an issue. And it will do it all on a voice activated colour touch screen. You need the GPS, you need the passive radar detection and you know it. You also know you will be far more comfortable in the truck. So take it and go. You're coming home this way anyway, remember?"

"Fine, I'll take the damn Escalade."

"Good girl. Be careful." He handed her up into the truck and shut the door once she was seated. She started it and waved good bye before starting down the driveway. He watched his favourite thing in the whole world drive away from him with a heavy heart. He wasn't thinking of the truck, either. She was the one thing he would do anything to protect. But so often he couldn't protect her from herself. Some of her discomfort with what she was driving into transferred to him. He was worried about what sort of situation he was sending her into. What about the scenario gave his little she wolf the idea she needed fake id and fake registration information for her car? Her instinct for trouble, she being trouble incarnate, was almost infallible. Which was why the truck had a tracking device in it that he could monitor from his home PC. She wasn't getting away from him without some way of keeping an eye on her. Not when she was so sure there was trouble coming.

The first thing Tempest did on leaving Angelo's was hit a drive thru for Pepsi. She was still only half awake, and knew she wouldn't likely allow herself to stop for more than gas and food until she hit Los Angeles. She was going to need the caffeine. The GPS system in the dash kept her on track. True to Angelo's word, when she needed to slow down due to police presence, the dash mounted unit informed her well in advance. She was doing well, pushing well in excess of one hundred and forty miles an hour when the GPS informed her it was safe to do so. All that mattered was getting to Jesse as fast as she could. She thought about calling her mother, just to let her know she was ok, but she knew at this point it would bring up questions about where she was and why. She wasn't ready to answer those questions just yet so she didn't call.

She drove for eight hours, stopping only when the truck told her it was hungry. She bought caffeine and food when she bought gas, and used the bathroom. She tried to keep every stop for fuel and food under fifteen minutes. At the speed limit she had a thirty seven hour trip ahead of her. She planned to make it in twenty one hours. That expected an average speed of one hundred and forty miles an hour and very few stops. She had checked on the GPS, which was—as were most of Angelo's electronic toys—very sophisticated. She was sure the damn thing could order her lunch if it knew in what city she would like to dine.

Three hours later she was in Colorado. She didn't even perceive any of the beautiful scenery. It merely flew by the truck unobserved as she watched white lines flash past and worried about her cousin. Brother, she reminded. She had to start getting into character now. Otherwise someone was going to ask her about her brother and she was going to snap back about how she was an only child, and that wouldn't do. Or call her Jessica and she was going to just look through them. Or correct them. And Tempest wasn't a common name. It wouldn't be hard for anyone with an interest to figure that Jesse didn't have a sister named Tempest, but he damn sure did have a cousin by that name. And then her whole plan was fucked. Why she needed the secrecy she didn't know, but she did.

Another five hours of driving later and she was crossing into Utah and was about at the limit of how far she could drive without falling asleep at the wheel. It was one am, and she'd been driving for sixteen hours non-stop at a very high rate of speed and doing it on about four hours of sleep in the previous twenty four before that. She pulled into the next truck stop she found, crawled into the back with the doors locked and the gun under her pillow and slept, after setting her cell phone to wake her with an alarm four hours later.

Angelo was right. If she died on her way to Jesse, while no one knew where she was or why, or even who she was, she wouldn't be any good to anyone. When her phone woke her from her totally dreamless sleep, she got up out of the rear of her ride and went looking for the bathroom. She used it before changing her clothes in the stall. She felt sticky and gross in the clothes she'd been wearing more than thirty six hours and slept in twice. She washed her hands and splashed her face with cold water once she exited the cubical. After brushing her teeth she felt marginally more human, though still not anywhere near awake. Given it was four am and she'd only had eight non consecutive hours sleep in the previous forty eight, she guessed that was only normal.

She bought a gallon of soda and a package of trucker style wake up pills from a tired looking clerk in the convenience store area. Given what the average truck stop patron looked like, she was glad she would never stand out for her haggard, straggly, I-haven't-slept-in-my-own-bed-let-alone-a-real-bed-in-days look. She downed two of her pep pills with a swallow of Pepsi, and mused that if her mom thought she was bad on a normal Pepsi rush, she didn't want to see her when the caffeinated pills kicked in.

After that she gassed the truck again, even though it was only half empty. She figured that if she did it while she was already stopped, she was only saving herself another stop down the line. Five hours and two gas pit stops later, she was about to cross into the state of California at Pasadena. She parked the truck out of sight behind a large brick warehouse and swapped the plates, vin placards, and placed her New Mexico inspection sticker in the place on the windshield Angelo had told her it went on. Then, with a deep breath, she got back in the truck and finished the drive into the sunny state of California. And realized with some shock and disappointment that she was about to celebrate her twenty first birthday far from home. It was now the third of August and her 'real' birthday, not the one she was claiming as Jessica, was only six days away. She doubted very much she'd be content with Jesse's lot and home again in time for a party. The best she could hope for was home with Angelo, but even that didn't seem likely. How was she supposed to walk away from Jesse, leaving him all alone?

She had to find out what kind of situation she was dealing with before she worried any more about it. She fed the name of the hospital that Hector had given her into the GPS and followed the on screen map 'til she found herself in the parking lot. It was ten am. She was wrecked. And it was only going to get worse. She parked the truck, locked it, and armed the security before crossing the black asphalt expanse. With a deep inhale that she blew forcefully out she pushed open the main door and walked into the lobby of the hospital. There were potted plants all around. The name of the facility was proclaimed in gold letters behind a reception desk. The desk was manned by two female receptionists and a male commissionaire. She waited in line for the first available person. When she was up, she happened to get one of the female receptionists.

"Yes, how may I direct you?" the woman asked.

"I'm looking for Jesse Adams. He was shot a few days ago and I was told he was brought here."

The woman typed something into her terminal. She read the screen once, seemed to do a double take, looked at Tempest for a moment, went back to her screen once more, before looking at Tempest again. "Jesse Adams?"

"Yeah. Jesse Mark Adams."

"I'm sorry but Mr. Adams is in the intensive care unit and can only be visited by immediate family."

"I guess I'm sorry to inform you that I'm his sister and that counts as immediate family in my book. I don't know how much more immediate you want it to get," Tempest snapped.

"I'm sorry Miss, but our information doesn't include Mr. Adams having a sister." The woman was clearly taken aback at Tempest's tone.

"I'm sorry to snap at you. Listen, my brother ran away when he was sixteen from where we grew up, and ended up here. We lost touch when he ran off. We were just kids. I haven't seen him in five years. But he's still my only brother. My twin brother. So it took awhile for a friend of his to track down a friend of mine and get news to me that he'd been hurt. So if he didn't tell the people he knew here that he had a family in New Mexico I wouldn't be surprised. And to make it even better once I found out I had to finish a huge project that I couldn't hand off to anyone else, and then hand off about five more that I could. But now I'm here, and my brother is shot, and I haven't slept in about two days and no one can tell me how badly Jess is hurt or how it happened. So I'd really like to see him."

"He's in room 1410 in the ICU. Go up those elevators to floor fourteen. There will be a hall to your left, one to your right, and two like a y right in front of you. Go down the left branch of the y. His room will be the last one on the left."

"_Thank_ you," she couldn't stop the snotty tone of her statement, when the location of her cousin was finally given to her. Tempest walked away and over to the bank of elevators. In her haste and preoccupation, she missed seeing the other woman pick up the phone and place a call, a look of worried concern on her face.

She pushed the up button and waited for one of the cars to open. When it did she stepped on and moved to the back, leaning her head back onto the wall of the car. She watched the numbers go up as the elevator rose skyward. She fought a need to panic when she started to muse about what she might see in Jesse's room. One step at a time was the only way she talked herself through it. Just put one foot in front of the other. And keep breathing. In. Out. Left foot. Right. She got off the elevator on the indicated floor and found the hallway she needed easily before she started reading room numbers. When she found the door to Jesse's room she moved to push it open.


	5. Walking Blind

**Lose the Road**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 4 – Walking Blind

"You go and I'll be ok. I can dream the rest away. It's just a little touch of fate, it'll be ok."

Before she could do much more than brace her palms on the door in preparation for shoving it inward, a masculine hand wrapped around her wrist. With some difficulty she fought to remember she was a designer. Not a martial artist, or a mechanic with a short fuse. It wouldn't do to start throwing punches before she got names and intents this time. "Excuse me?" she questioned before she allowed herself to look at the person with a grip on her. When she did turn her head to find the face attached to the person who dared stop her progress, she found herself looking at a large, plain clothes, African-American police officer.

"And you would be?" he asked her.

She was fairly sure the veneer of pleasant interest was fake and hid a desire to slam her into a chair and play good cop bad cop, without the benefit of the good cop. "The sister of the person in this room."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. Why? Is Jess in some trouble with the police for getting himself shot by a homicidal manic?" The lack of sleep and quantity of caffeine in her system made her punchy and irritable. She spoke without thinking. She knew it would be smarter to try and make herself out to be sweet and biddable; a more typical female than she was. But she was too tired to put on a convincing act right now anyway. So she figured sarcastic, snappish Tempest was going to have to pass for Jessica, balls and all.

"No, he's not in any trouble. But we'd like to know the whereabouts of his friends that ran off. We don't really believe him when he says he doesn't know where they are. So whether he did anything wrong or not, he's going to be in trouble if he's withholding information in an ongoing investigation."

"If my brother told you he doesn't know anything he doesn't know anything. Jesse was the baby of that group of petty thugs he lived with. I have no doubt the big, bald dumb ass that called himself the leader didn't care to share anything important with Jesse."

Her assessment of Dominic got a chuckle out of the previously serious officer. He sobered quickly. "So you don't know anything about the whereabouts of Dominic Toretto and the rest of his team?"

"No, and if I did, and it would save Jesse some grief, I'd tell you in half a heartbeat. Dominic Toretto and his band of merry idiots mean nothing to me."

As though he could see by the set of her face, and the look in her eyes that she was telling the truth, he let her go with a nod, walking off down the hall. She tried to psych herself back up in preparation for going into Jesse's room. The encounter with the cop had shaken her to the point where she wasn't quite ready to face Jesse just yet. Why were the cops so interested in who visited Jesse? She was very glad she'd listened to the little voice in her mind that had told her not to be Tempest when she got involved in this situation.

She happened to look down the hall before opening the door to Jesse's room, and saw a nurse coming her way. Another one came out of the room behind her and the two started a hushed conversation. Giving herself time to calm down, Tempest allowed herself to eavesdrop with half an ear as she took deep breaths. _And people say this is supposed to be calming!_

"It's just such a sin."

"What is?" the shorter, fatter nurse asked her taller, thinner co-worker as she left the room directly behind Tempest.

"Such a young man—not to mention _what_ a man—just up and deciding he has no reason to go on."

"So there's no change then?"

"None. There's no logical reason why he hasn't come out of it yet. The doctor says it's like he just doesn't want to live. His heart is beating on its own, and he's breathing by himself, but yet he just isn't getting better. Only steadily worse."

"Do you believe in that sort of thing?"

"It's hard not to. Despite the blood loss and trauma, he's young and strong. He should be recovering. He should be awake. But yet his vitals just keep getting weaker and weaker. There is no other reason that I see for him to keep declining like this unless he simply doesn't want to live."

With a shake of her head, Tempest stopped listening to them and pushed into Jesse's room. It was sad that someone so young and strong had decided to die rather than to fight to get well, but it was hardly her problem. She had Jesse to worry about and take care of. If someone else had no one, it was sad and she emphasised just because the two nurses were so shaken up about it, but she had her cousin to worry about. She couldn't take time to shed tears over a stranger.

Finally resolved, she finished making her way into her cousin's room. Being prepared for the worst made reality almost easy to accept. Jesse seemed to be sleeping. He wasn't on the heart stopping array of machines which TV and movies had taught her to expect. He seemed to be breathing on his own, though there was a tube under his nose to provide him with oxygen in addition to what was available in the air. He was dressed in one of those horrid hospital gowns she hated, but she figured that was to be expected. He was in the hospital. There was a machine keeping track of his heartbeat, and he was on an IV. She looked again. Ok, on two. And it was clear they weren't letting him up to go to the bathroom.

She was just so glad to see him breathing with a steady rhythm and see proof his heart was beating, a wave of relief hit her at the knees and she had to sit down. She collapsed into one of the chairs provided for visitors at the bedside and sat. She put her head between her knees to fight off a bout of dizziness. She had built up Jesse's injuries to near fatal in her mind. The realization that yet again she'd let her tendency to look for the worst instead of the best in every situation build things up to proportions they'd never actually reached. For the first time in three days, she began to accept the fact that Jesse was likely to be fine. Clearly he had some recovering to do. But he wasn't anywhere near as bad off as she'd convinced herself he would be.

She could only surmise that she'd leaned back in the chair to rest her eyes and drifted off. She woke up to a nurse answering Jesse's questions about her.

"Your sister was very worried about you, from what I've heard. She's been there in that chair for the last two hours. She must have fallen asleep waiting for you to wake up."

"Sister?" she heard Jesse croak.

"Hey Jesse. How you feelin'?" she asked, her voice husky with relieved worry and fatigue.

"Like I was shot three times by some Asian asshole on a motorcycle."

"If you can crack bad jokes, you're going to be ok." She rose wearily from her chair and crossed to sit on the edge of Jesse's bed. She waited with a patient—faked—smile for the nurse to leave. She finally did after checking Jesse's bandages, IV, and making sure he wasn't in any unnecessary pain.

"Sister?"

"Somehow when Hector called to tell me you were shot I got the feeling all wasn't well. When he told me you were here all alone because everyone else ran off, the feeling got worse not better." She leaned in close to Jesse. "So I had Angelo make me a new identity. No one but Angelo knows I'm down here."

"Border patrol?"

"Surprisingly easy to avoid if you know where to go to do it. So he told me where, made up ID and a past for me as Jessica Adams and sent me on my way. I don't think we look enough alike to pull off twins, but Angelo would disagree."

"So he's still hacking for profit I guess."

"Don't get pissy. He's the reason why I could come here. But you gotta remember that I'm your sister and to call me Jessica. We don't know when people might be listening. It's important that they don't know."

"How'd you know it was important?"

She shrugged. "Gut feeling. Leon woulda called me Jess. If the shit hadn't _really_ hit the fan hard, Leon would have called. No matter what he would have found a way to let me know about you, and why he was running off. He might not have told me where, to protect me of course," she grimaced sarcastically to show what she thought of that idea. "But he would have called. Told me not to worry. Told me that everything would be ok. He would not have left me in the dark and you all alone. It's not his style."

"When did you get to know Leon so well?"

"Before," she answered evasively. She never had filled Jesse in on just how close she and Leon were, or how they had initially gotten that way. "So, how do you really feel?" she changed the subject before pausing to brush her hand over his cheek affectionately. He seemed to think for a moment about his answer.

"Guilty."

"Why?" Tempest asked incredulously. "What do you have to feel guilty about?"

"I did something stupid. Bet the Jetta against Tran for slips and lost."

"Jesse! You had no right to bet your dad's car!" She caught his reproachful look and snapped her mouth closed on further lecture. "I'm sorry. You know that now, obviously. But that's nothing to feel guilty about."

"That's not what I feel guilty about. I feel guilty because if they hadn't been distracted about me, and where I was. If they hadn't been worrying about me. If I had been there with them to do my job, maybe the whole thing wouldn't have gone to shit so badly."

"Yeah, and now you'd be on the run with the bald idiot."

"How do you know?" Jesse snapped.

The tone was foreign coming from Jesse and it caused Tempest to do a double take. She wasn't used to hearing anything so vehemently spoken coming from Jesse's mouth. She was still floundering for a retort when Jesse carried on.

"How do you know? If I'd been there to do my part, maybe we would have known more. Maybe we wouldn't have done the job. Maybe we would have done it earlier or later. At the very least I don't deserve a free ride from the blame because a stupid move on my part kept me from being there with my family."

"Jesse." She didn't know how to put into words what she had to say. "I have no idea what they were into because Leon never told me about it and neither did you. And I don't wanna know. If I know, I'll tell that cop if he hassles me again, because I want to save you and I a headache more than I want to protect Dominic and the rest of them. You all follow that big, dumb, bald Neanderthal a little too blindly for my tastes. But whatever it was, I somehow doubt that you could have changed too much about it. Anything that turned into this kind of clusterfuck wouldn't be swayed too far either way by one man."

"But I still should have been there." A single tear rolled down his pale cheek. "I should have been with my team. Not running from my loss like a fuckin' coward. You woulda handed over the fuckin' keys and you're a girl! I pussied out like a god damn chickenshit."

"Yeah, and now you're paying for it. So what? That was your mistake. If you wanna feel bad about something for awhile, feel bad about that. Don't feel bad about whatever the fuck Dominic did to get himself and the rest of the follow the leader patrol in hot water. Besides that, you're family. In my world you don't leave family off running from a homicidal maniac on a motorcycle while you go off to do whatever the fuck! They should have forgotten about whatever it is they did that they fucked up so badly in the first place. They should have left it alone until they found you. Until they kept you safe from Tran. Not left you off on your own and continued on their merry way. And I woulda expected Dominic, Leon and Vincent to know that."

Jesse nodded like he agreed, though the look on his face seemed to tell another story. "How long you staying?"

"Until you're better. 'Til I'm sure you're gonna be ok and until you're settled at home. They tell you how long you're lookin' at before you can go home?"

"Not really. The cops came in here right after I woke up and asked me a bunch of questions about Brian and what happened with Tran. They tried to get me to talk about the trucks but I pretended I didn't know anything."

"Trucks? What are you talking about?"

Jesse looked up at her guiltily before telling her the whole story from start to finish. Much as she said she didn't want to know, he had to tell someone. She was the only one he could tell where he knew for sure it wouldn't come back to bite him on the ass. For all her big words, she wouldn't tell the cops what he'd told her. When he was wrapping up, another nurse came in to check on him again, and administer some pills to him. She looked at Tempest. "Miss, you're going to have to leave. Visiting hours stop from now until six pm. You can come back then."

"What am I supposed to do in a city I don't live in for the next two hours?"

"Go to our house, take a shower and a nap," Jesse caught himself about to call her 'T'. "Jess. Go to our house and take a shower and a nap. Then come back and we'll catch up some more."

"I guess. I hope I can still remember the address."

"Buy a map. You'll need it. You'll never get to our house from here. Not when you haven't seen the roads in years."

"I've upgraded my ride a bit since you and I saw each other last bro. The Escalade has GPS."

There were questions begging to be asked dancing in Jesse's eyes. But, mindful of the gaze of his nurse, he couldn't pose them. "You're coming back later, right?"

"Of course big bro. I'll be back later. A little nap'll do me good." After she watched Jesse nod his acceptance of her plan, she left the room and went back out of the hospital the way she'd come.


	6. Pictures of You

**Lose the Road**

By –_ TempestRaces_

Chapter 5 – **Pictures of You**

"**Pictures of you, Pictures of me, remind us all of what we used to be."**

Once she got in the truck she let out a breath she hadn't even realized she'd been holding and laid her head onto the steering wheel. He was going to be ok. He was already awake and talking. He couldn't do much moving. And he seemed pretty shaken mentally. But he was going to recover. And she'd stay put as long as she had to to make sure he was well on the way before she left. That decided she finally started the truck and put it in reverse. She programmed Jesse's address into the GPS unit and started to follow it's on screen directions.

Half an hour later she was pulling up at the house. It looked just as she remembered it. Until she took a good look and realized the whole front lawn was peppered with bullet holes, the earth all torn up. "If this Johnny Tran asshole wasn't dead, he would be soon," she growled to herself as she got out of the Escalade. She locked the doors and armed the security before walking up to the front door. It was locked. She really hadn't expected that. She walked around to the back and found the rear door locked too. She got off the wooden back step and walked to the back side of it. She reached under the step, felt around, and felt her fingers close over the key Vince kept duct taped to the bottom side of one of the floor boards. She could still hear him telling her 'I've been locked out of the place drunk one too many fuckin' times not to keep a spare key back here somewhere.'

She peeled the key off the tape and clambered back up the step before unlocking the door and going into the house. She closed and locked the door behind her. The kitchen was spotless. She knew from what Jesse had told her that they'd been living in trailers at this huge race meet called Racewars for a day or two before the big event anyway. So of course Mia had spiffied up her part of the house before locking it up for several days. She moved into the living room and looked around. Nothing much had changed. The PlayStation was gone, replaced by a PS2.

She crossed to the mantle on the far wall, picked up the 'team' picture and looked at the faces. It was a current picture she was sure, because she had no idea who the blonde with his arm around Mia was. He could only be the Brian Jesse had told her about. The blue-eyed cop who had fallen for Mia. The cop they had all believed when he told them he was just a down on his luck street racer slinging parts for Harry.

Jesse and Leon were crouched out front while Dom and Letty stood behind them and sideways, Dom's arms around her waist. The blonde man and Mia were off to the other side, with Blondie at Dom's back. And Vince was on Letty's other side, standing alone on the far left. His arm was kind of half around Letty. But his eyes were directed off to the side of the image and he had the same look on his face he always had when someone tried to take his picture when she was around. The whole 'make it stop' look of distaste. He didn't like to have his picture taken any more than she did. "So where are you all now?" The picture didn't answer. But where ever they all were, they were likely together. Not all alone as they had left Jesse.

She put the picture back rather forcefully with a curse. Fuck them all. And especially fuck Vincent. He was the only one with the wherewithal to tell Dom to stop being a moron, and give up the harebrained scheme before it got them all killed. He was the only one Dom might have listened to and he was the only one with the balls to tell Dom off, get in the larger man's face and hold his ground. But he hadn't. He'd let them all go down, and for what? For money to keep a bunch of stupid, over tuned cars on the road so Dom could not only be the best racer, but keep a posse of the best racers around him to be his subjects too. "Stupid fucking moron," she growled. She looked at picture Vince. "And you! You knew better. You had to know it was a dumb idea. So what the fuck were you thinking? And getting Letty and Jesse involved to boot! The three stooges you, Dom and Leon made I understand, at least." It was like because she couldn't take her frustrations out on the real people she was simply going to vent them at their picture representations and hope it worked. "And you," she turned her gaze to Leon. "Where were you when Jesse was betting the slip to that fuckin' Jetta? You were supposed to look out for him. You were supposed to be the street smart one while I wasn't here to do it. You were supposed to be like his big brother. So why the fuck didn't you stop him before it was too late? And why the fuck did you bail on the aftermath when you didn't do your job?" Picture Leon didn't answer either. He just kept staring out at her with the same serious look on his face.

She turned away from the fireplace with a growl. She was rapidly becoming too keyed up to take a nap. Figuring the basement and Jesse's room was the best place for her to calm down, she started back toward the kitchen. Before she got much farther than the doorway between the living and dining rooms, there was a knock on the front door.

Her eyebrows knitted together over her nose in confusion and concern. Who would be at the door? If she didn't answer it, it would seem strange. After all, her truck was parked in the driveway. She crossed to the front door and hauled it open to find two uniformed police officers on the step. "Yeah?"

"We're looking for Dominic Toretto."

"You and the rest of the cops in this god damn city. He ain't here. And Leon ain't here, and Vince ain't here, and Letty ain't here, and Mia ain't here either. Does that cover them all?"

"Who are you, exactly?"

That certainly was a common refrain from the cops of L.A. today, Tempest mused. "I'm the sister of one of the guys who lives here. What's it to you?"

"The people who live here are under investigation in a series of robberies. Can we come in and ask you a few questions?"

"You can ask all the questions you want. But you can do it from right where you are. You're not coming into his house unless you have a warrant that says you can." She watched as they shared a look. It was clear they thought her refusal to let them in meant she was hiding something. She didn't know if she was or not. But she did know if she invited them into the house and they found anything incriminating, it would be admissible because they were in the house with her permission. If they wanted to come in they'd need that warrant.

"Where were you on Saturday?"

"Home in Santa Fe working on a design project."

"You're from Santa Fe?"

"Yeah. Listen, my brother isn't under this investigation. He was shot almost to death on the front walk by Johnny Tran. Since he was running in fear for his life from Johnny at the time, the FBI has already cleared the fact he couldn't have been part of whatever the fuck the rest of the idiot patrol was up to. So I really don't know what you think I'll be able to do for you. Jesse and I barely ever spoke in the five years he's been in L.A. I didn't know his friends, and he certainly didn't fill me in with the details of anything they were doing so I doubt he even knew himself. Good luck finding Dominic though. I hope you nail his overgrown balls to the wall for what he got my brother into with this Tran dude."

"So since you've been here, none of Toretto's team has attempted to make contact with you? You haven't heard from one Officer Brian O'Connor either?"

"No and no. Seriously guys, I really can't help you. Like I told the plain clothes guy at the hospital, if I knew anything I'd share. I'll co-operate any way I can, but I just don't have anything for you. I just really want to take a shower and get some sleep. I have to be back at the hospital to sit with my brother in a few hours. I'm only staying here because Jesse told me to and it seemed to make him feel better to think of me here than in some motel."

"Ok. If Toretto does contact you, you'll let us know?" The cop who made the statement held out his card.

"You'll be the second one to know, right behind me."

With a nod they left and she locked the door behind them before collapsing against it. Dominic had dug his team in deep. With a shake of her head she pushed off the door and made her way into the kitchen and down the basement stairs. The place wasn't in any better shape than the last time she'd seen it.

Without knowing how she'd gotten there, she found herself in Leon's room. All the dresser drawers he had were open, their contents spilling out and rifled through. His closet stood open, and it was clear that about half his clothes were gone. He always told her that she was the last thing he saw before he went to sleep at night because there was a picture of the two of them together on his night stand. It was gone. Gone like Leon. And when he'd left, he'd known that he wasn't coming back for a long time. On impulse she went upstairs and looked in the bedrooms up there. It was obvious Dom, Letty and Mia had known the same thing. Their clothes were mostly gone, and hastily removed. A few personal items were gone too, but the lack of forethought was apparent.

She wandered back to the basement and into Jesse's room. All his things were just as she remembered them. His drawers weren't open and empty. His closet was still full of his things. His bed was unmade and half his wardrobe was strewn dirty across the floor. She knew he hadn't run off. He'd packed for Racewars and never been back. But he hadn't run away.

Just one room left on her survey. It was the last place she ever wanted to find herself again. But just like driving by a bad car wreck, something compelled her to look and damned if she could help herself. She left Jesse's room and crossed the living area to the closed door of Vince's domain. With a deep breath to attempt to steady her nerves, she pushed the door open.

The smell of Vince assaulted her at the door and it turned her knees to jello. His smell was still so familiar she might as well have been sleeping on top of him yesterday instead of over two years ago. His room was just the way she remembered it. Right down to the much assaulted alarm clock glowing red in the perpetual night of his basement room with the blacked out window. His clothes, like Jesse's, were strewn dirty on his floor. But none of his drawers were open, and his closet looked full. She pulled open the drawer where his tank tops had always been when she'd been living in his room and found the drawer full. His favourite shirt sitting right on the top.

All his drawers were full. So why had he run off with his friends without packing when all the others had taken the time to fill their bags? Why was there a picture of the two of them on his dresser? Why did he keep that in the first place? But since he had, why hadn't he taken it with him if it was so important to him? Why did his room seem as undisturbed as Jesse's when the rest of the rooms of the team members showed clearly the haste their occupants had left in, and the lack of intent to return?

Her breath caught on a sob. She did the only thing she could think of to do in that moment. She started shedding her clothes on her way across the room to the bed. Next thing she knew she was back in Vince's bed in her underwear, his pillow clutched to her chest as she buried her face into it and sobbed with her whole body. As she started to cry herself out the scent of Vince surrounded her and she fell into a deep sleep, strangely comforted by the presence of Vince in the room, even though she knew he was run off with his friends for parts unknown. Even though she knew he too had abandoned Jesse to his fate.

When she woke up the clock told her it was seven pm and she'd been out for about three hours. She showered quickly, dressed just as fast in clean clothes, and drove efficiently back to the hospital. She wasn't hassled on her way to the fourteenth floor this time, and made it to Jesse's room without meeting anyone at all. She found Jesse awake and watching the little TV he'd been given. "Hey. How you doin'?" she asked as she walked into the room.

"Good. You look a bit better. You get some sleep?"

"A bit. I'll get more tonight." She sat on the edge of the bed beside her cousin. "I'm so glad you're gonna be ok."

Jesse smiled. "It's good to see you T." It was very good to have someone he loved close to him. The weight of loneliness that had been bearing down on him was lifted. He wasn't all alone anymore. "So, Escalade huh?"

"Yeah, Angelo insisted. Said my Altima was too old to make the trip. Plus, he was right. The GPS and radar detection equipment came in very handy. I made the drive between here and Toronto in about twenty four hours."

"I still don't know why you didn't just come under your own name. You didn't do anything wrong and you don't know anything. Being here for me isn't illegal."

"I know that. But it just sat wrong with me. I didn't know what I was walking into and really, I still don't. Plus, I wouldn't have been allowed into the ICU if I wasn't immediate family and cousin doesn't always count."

Jesse nodded his understanding and agreement almost absently. "T, I need to ask you a favour."

"Name it. But maybe you should get use to calling me Jessica. You're going to have to remember when the doctors and nurses or cops are around."

"I will. But when it's just you and me, I want to call you by your real name. It's like you're not really here if I have to call you some fake name."

"Ok, but you can't forget to switch to Jessica if anyone else is around." She would do almost anything in her power to make him feel even just a little more comfortable, after what he'd been through.

"I won't. You don't think anyone is listening in to what we say in here, do you?"

"I think if they were they already would have been in here to question you about the things you told me earlier."

"Well, that stuff is pretty common knowledge. Maybe not who was doing it, or exactly what, but it's not earth shattering evidence to them. What if they're waiting to see if I tell you anything really good?"

"Jesse, I think you have to be able to expect a certain level of doctor patient confidentiality, and I don't think you could expect any if they were letting the FBI bug your hospital room. As long as the door is shut and there are no doctors or nurses around, we should be ok."

"Well, ok then. Listen," Jesse looked up at her earnestly. "I have a favour to ask."


	7. Alone in the Bitterness

**Lose the Road**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 6 – Somewhere alone in the Bitterness

"Another soldier says he's not afraid to die. I am scared. I'm so scared."

Jesse looked up at her earnestly. "I know you hate him. And I know he hurt you beyond hurt. And I know I have no right to ask it from you. But they won't tell me anything and I really need to know. Will you go check on Vince, find out what's wrong with him?"

Tempest was very glad she was sitting on the bed for that one. Otherwise she would have melted onto the floor in a weak little puddle. "Excuse me? What do you mean check on Vince? He bailed with the rest of them."

"No he didn't. I heard the nurses talking. He was brought in here. Something went wrong. I told you."

"You didn't tell me the something ended Vince up in the hospital." She closed her eyes, tipped her head back. This could not be happening to her. He was supposed to be gone with his friends. It was supposed to be ok for her to keep hating him. He was not supposed to be in the ICU hurt. Her eyes opened again when she felt Jesse's hand on her cheek.

"I know what he did to you. Leon told me. Don't be mad at Le, he was right. I needed to know. But now he's hurt and it must be pretty bad and I can't deal with it if I don't know just what's wrong with him. And you're the only one who can find out, and you're the only one I trust to tell me the truth once you know. He's the only piece of my life I have left."

"Jesse," she moaned. "It was nearly the end of me to come here and find you like this. I only came because I was sure he was gone with the others. I love you more than pretty much anyone else in the world, and if I'd known he was still here I still can't promise you I would have came down here. Finding out he's still here on top of what's going on with you," she sighed, tipping her head back and fighting tears. "I don't know how much more I can take."

"I'm tired now anyway T. Peek in on V and go home. Get a good night's sleep. Everything will look better in the morning."

How could she deny Jesse this? She couldn't. _You just have to see him, see that he's alive so you can tell Jess, and you never have to see him again then. It'll just take a second. You can do it. _"Ok, I'll look in on him. What room is he in?"

"The room right across the hall."

Tempest got up in a dreamland as the shock of Jesse's words sunk in. It couldn't be real. It wasn't _ok_ and it couldn't be real. She wouldn't have it. The young—what a man!—man across the hall that was dying because he had no will to live was her V? Just no.

"T, you ok?"

"Fine," she answered. Her voice sounded like she was off in la la land even to her, but she couldn't help it. "I'm fine. I'm just going to look into the room across the hall before I go home and get some sleep. I'll see you in the morning, after I wake up."

"You're sure you're ok?"

"Yeah, just tired. Good night."

"Night," Jesse answered as he watched her walk across the room and out the door. She was lying. But he couldn't do a damn thing about it. So was she lying because she already knew something about the patient across the hall, and it wasn't good? Or was she lying because it was Vince, and he'd broken her into a hundred pieces, and now she was scared he'd be able to do it again?

Tempest walked out of Jesse's room and into the hall with no idea how she'd done it or when. She didn't become aware of herself or where she was until her hands were again braced flat against a door. And then she became aware she had her hands pressed flat against the three inch thick wooden barrier between her and where Vince was lying in an ICU hospital bed. She realized that she was about to enter a room where Vince was dying in a hospital bed all alone.

Jesse was right. She did hate Vince. Hated him so much the emotion scared her sometimes. But yet, she still loved him too, and the love she still had for him was so strong, it scared her _all_ the time. Every time she thought about her love for him, she was terrified by the intensity of it. It was so impossible to stop loving someone you loved so much, no matter what they did to you. But you could hate them for what they'd done at the same time. And she knew it first hand because she lived it every day.

No matter how much she hated him, or what he'd done to her, for the last two years she'd always known he was alive and well. She always knew that with one word from her to tell him she needed him, he'd come running. He was just that kind of person. He had been her safety net. She had always known that she could fall into him and he would catch her, if the time ever came when she wasn't strong enough to catch herself. She'd never had to make that call. But she had still felt him behind her, waiting for the day to come. And now he couldn't catch her, couldn't be strong for her, because he was dying. And when he did, that vague sense of always being safe in the world because he was in it would die with him.

At first, when she'd come home broken by what she'd seen, she hadn't known how she would go on. But she had, because in the back of her mind she had always wondered if he wasn't just staging what she'd seen in some misguided attempt to prove to her she could do better than him, whether she wanted to or not. She had been able to pick herself up off the ground and march onward because someday, when she was ready, he would still be there and she could confront him about it. They would fight about it, roar and kick and scream about it. Fuck over it. They could work past it. They could be _they_ again, when she was ready. He was so strong and stubborn, it had never entered her mind to dream that he wouldn't be there when she was ready.

He was Vince. He was an immovable force in her mind. He was immortal. He was the toughest man she knew. The strongest. The most determined. He was her touchstone. Because when she started to break down, she could touch the memories of him with her mind and put herself back together. She could march forward because one day, when she was ready, when she was older and more grown, she would find him again. Why she had never once entertained the idea that he might meet someone else and move on she didn't know. But it was just one of those things she knew. Or had figured she had known. That when she was ready for him, he would make himself ready for her. They were two halves of the same whole. Never complete when they were apart, and destined to be together. Fate had brought them together and she had always figured stubborn will would bring them back together some day.

But she wasn't ready yet. And now here she was anyway. But he wasn't waiting to catch her. He wasn't going to be her rock this time. Because he was dying. She screwed her eyes shut and started trying the deep breathing again.

In.

Out.

Keep it together.

In.

Out.

It wasn't working. Get it over with, like taking off a Band-Aid. Rip it off. No anaesthetic. The faster you got it done, the less it hurt, the more it didn't live up to the anticipation of how awful it would be.

She cracked the door and slid sideways into the room. The lighting in the room was dim. The lights had already been lowered to night mode. There was only a single bed in the center of the left hand wall. There was a window on the back wall and it would look out over the parking lot, were the drapes not closed. The door to the small bathroom contained in the room was beside the window. There was a night stand beside the bed on one side, and two chairs beside the other. The walls were antiseptic white, and the floor was an off grey tile. She realized that she was out of things to look at in the room that weren't the bed and the man lying on it.

That same human need to stare at the wreckage even when you knew you shouldn't drew her further into the room and over beside the bed. She walked through the room and the air felt like glue. It took so much effort for her body just to cut through the air that it was like a living force trying to keep her from the bedside. When she finally allowed herself to look right at him, wreckage about summed things up. He was a wreck, and so was she, for having seen him this way.

The white and blue checked gown with the snaps across the shoulders served reminder to just where they were. The indignity of it drove things home. It wasn't something he ever would have put up with had he a choice. It made him look vulnerable, and he wouldn't have had that if he had a choice. So the fact that he didn't have one at all was pressed home rather unmistakably. Remarkably, he wasn't on artificial respiration. A machine monitored his heart rate, just as with Jesse.

Other than the unnatural stillness of him, he might have just been sleeping. But she knew Vince, and how he slept. And he wasn't that quiet in his sleep. He wasn't that still. She knew he wouldn't know it, but in his sleep he caressed her side, her hip. Muttered to her. Moved under her. He did not lie on his back with his arms at his sides in total stillness.

Jesse's state was hard. But she could deal. He was awake. He was talking. He was looking forward to getting better. He had always left her with a feeling that he needed her to take care of him anyway. She was used to it. But not so with Vince.

All her life she had felt like she needed to take care of everyone. That she had to be the strong one. The one who was always there for everyone. The one who could handle anything and deal with anything. The one who knew everything, and could do anything that needed doing. The one that was never shaken by circumstances. Calm, cool and collected. That was her. She couldn't trust anyone to be stronger than her so she simply had to make sure she was stronger than everyone. Until Vince. In him she had found someone who she had figured might just be able to be there for her for a change.

She was an alpha, no way around it. But he was more so. She was tough, but he was more so. She was street smart, but he was more so. Not that she'd ever tell him any of it to his face. His head would explode with how big it would get. But in his presence, she could allow him to be strong for everyone and just be a normal person. Could even have a weak moment. Until now. Until she found him like this. Now there was no one to be strong for her. Now she was thrust back into the role of being strong for everyone because there was no one left to do it.

Wearily, she sat in one of the chairs beside the bed. She looked at Vince and wished he'd look back at her. Not just lay there so still and quiet. He wasn't Vince without some layered tank tops, dirty jeans and a huge mouth running. Robbed of his larger than life attitude and that huge helping of arrogance, he was just a very well toned and tattooed man hurt badly, lying unconscious in a hospital bed. She couldn't take it.

"I can be strong for everyone else. I mean, I can. I'll do it. I'll be strong for Jesse. I'll be strong for my aunt when I break this to her. I'll be strong for Jesse's dad when I have to tell him. I'll be strong for my mom when I have to tell her. I'll be strong for everyone else like I always am." Her voice broke. "But if _you_ die, who's gonna be strong for _me_?" She took a shuddering breath in, the corners of her mouth turned down into a frown that was more heartbroken grimace, and she started to cry. "If you die, who's gonna be strong for me?" She put her head down on the edge of the bed and cried. She didn't want to, but she couldn't stop. That was such a horrible question. If you die, what will _I_ do? He was dying and her question was what would she do without him. But if he died, she couldn't do anything for him either. Her sobbing reached new proportions. She knew she looked like shit. Her eyes would be all red, her nose was running. And she could barely breathe. And always, she sat sobbing onto the woven cotton blanket draped over his bed as he lay there; still and silent in the night as she filled it with her muffled cries.

A wave of guilt crashed into her. When those two nurses had been talking about what a tragedy it was their patient wasn't going to get better, she'd shrugged it off as sad but not her problem. When she'd picked up the team picture and looked at him, she'd said some perfectly awful things thinking he was off with his friends where ever, and thought some even worse things too. And all that time he'd been lying here dying. He'd been lying here dying and she'd been calling him every name under the sun in her mind.

All she could do is sit in the chair, lay her head onto the white cotton blanket of his bed, and sob out all her pain, guilt, and uncertainty.


	8. Describing Pain

AN: I didn't want to make this so long but there was nowhere that really made sense to take a break in the middle. Just a friendly reminder that this story is like a popcorn flick, not really meant to be taken seriously, and a bit larger than life.

**Lose the Road**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 7 – **Describing Pain**

"**It's not too late to reach your hand to spare a drowning man."**

All he wanted was for it to be over. And he felt like he was close to getting what he wanted. The blackness was a little denser. The sensory perception of external stimulus in his world was a little dimmer. Maybe most people would fight the blackness creeping. But not him. Really, what did he have to live for?

His team was gone. Long gone by now.

He was in the hospital. He hated hospitals more than almost anything else.

He'd started his life down the road to totally fucked beyond repair two years ago, and ever since then he'd been living life like a man who didn't care. Like a man with nothing worth living for. Because after he'd broken _her_ what did he have? Some half assed infatuation with a woman who picked a god damn cop over him. Over the man who'd been there for her through every difficult time she ever had her whole life. She picked the lying cop over that kind of loyalty. She didn't deserve him. Finally he saw that. She didn't deserve him because she didn't _want_ him. And he would never make her happy. Why he had ever wanted to try so hard in the first place was lost on him. She would never make him happy either.

But so what was the point in carrying on now. Team gone. Only woman who ever really loved him gone.

So he chose not to get well. He chose to die. And the blackness was finally winning.

But what the fuck was that noise? Chick crying. _Shut it Mia! Really, put a god damn sock in it already_. Damn woman cried over everything. He didn't want her crying over him. Her tears were fake three quarters of the time anyway. Her woman's ploy to get her way. And even if she meant it this time, it was too little, too late after what she'd done to him with Brian. It'd serve her right when he died. See if she regretted the cop then!

But it didn't really sound like Mia crying. Not really. Mia never really quite reached that level of real despair. And the woman crying so close to him sounded totally broken. Like nothing would ever be ok in her world again. Like her heart was broken. Like he imagined another woman had sounded crying on the night he'd broken her.

It couldn't be. He started to fight the black shadow back. He couldn't let go until he knew for sure. If it wasn't Mia, and the crying was familiar to him, who else could it be? The sound of her tears was causing him _physical_ pain. The injuries to his arm and side weren't. They couldn't penetrate the morphine induced fog he was living under. But the sound of those tears tore right into his gut like a ten inch bowie knife pulled out of a clunky high heeled bitch boot. The thought of _that_ woman being broken down in despair made him feel sick, and he knew he hadn't eaten in days.

He fought to get his eyes open for another few moments. When he finally won he wished he hadn't. After god knew how many days without any light at all, his eyes didn't take well to being opened, even in the dim night time lighting of his hospital room. He tried again, only opening his eyes into cautious slits for the first few seconds. When that was ok, he moved his head to the side so he could get a better look at the person drenching his bed than he could out of his peripheral vision. All he could see was a cloud of curls the colour of black cherry cola.

Thankful she was sitting on the side of his body where his arm wasn't wrapped in gauze and stinging like a bastard, he slowly gathered his strength and moved his good arm toward her head. He felt like he'd been sick for weeks. He was so weak that moving his arm the few inches needed to pick up one of her shiny curls was an effort. But he managed it. The texture of that inky fire was just as he remembered. Baby fine, silky and soft. She didn't feel him toying with her hair, if her actions were any indication. She kept right on sobbing, her head turned toward his feet. He cleared his throat, getting ready to say something to her, and she didn't hear him over her own broken cries. "Baby," his voice was a low pitched rasp that he could barely hear himself over the noise she was making. "Baby," still low pitched and gravely, but closer to his normal. "Surely to god I'm not worth all this." She lifted her head to look at him but her crying got worse not better. She shook her head from side to side as she pushed away from the bed in what seemed like terror. "Is that no, I'm not worth it?"

"No," she answered with an almost hysterical laugh before her sobbing resumed. He was dying and he was trying to be funny. What was it with her and funny guys? And now he wasn't going to just die. He was going to wake up and be funny and talk to her and remind her why she'd fallen for him in the first place and _then_ he was going to die. It wasn't fair! Her breath caught on another sob.

"Well? You woke me up and now all you wanna do is sit there and make like a watering pot?"

The image brought another laugh out of her before the crying took over again, though slightly lessened. "Fuckin' funny guys," she muttered. "No. I don't wanna cry. I never wanna cry. But it all the stuff with Jess and just when I was dealing with that, he had to go and tell me that you didn't run off with the rest of the toolbox patrol." It was clear that toolbox was not supposed to point out they were all mechanics. That toolbox was her way of calling them 'stupid tools'. "That you were here in the room across the hall." How could it feel like two years was two weeks now that they were together again? It was like they had barely been apart. She still knew him as well as she knew herself, no matter how long it had been since they were last together. There was no shyness, no awkwardness of a long separation. Just a soul deep knowledge that they knew each other that went so much deeper than an acquaintanceship because he was friends with her cousin. They were two sides of one coin.

She looked at him with those god damn serious eyes. He never could handle it when her eyes went all serious and grey on him. "Baby," he started, attempting to sound soothing. The years fell away for him as well. She was hurting and he needed to wrap her in something soft and protect her from the world and anything in it that could cause her this kind of pain. His physical limitations made him want to start throwing things, and the fact he wouldn't have the strength to throw a Nerf ball across his small room just frustrated him further.

"And on the way to see Jesse this morning, when I was trying to psych myself up to go into his room and see my baby cousin on all those machines and with god knew what going into him and being done to him I stopped to listen to these two nurses talk about the hot guy who was dying in the room across the hall."

He winced, wondering how she had taken that news. He didn't have long to wait.

"And I was sad for them because they were sad, and sad for whoever was so young but dying because he just didn't wanna live. But then I shrugged it off, because I had no time to cry for a stranger."

The sobbing started in earnest again.

"They were talking about you! And I just shrugged it off like too bad, so sad but I have Jesse to worry about. And then, at the house I was perfectly awful about Leon and you, because I thought you took off with the rest of them and left Jesse all alone."

Her guilt and despair was almost palpable. "Aw baby, you couldn't have known. You couldn't have known." He lifted his good arm up, glad again it was the side she'd landed on. "Come here."

"I can't." She shook her head. "You're," she gestured at the bed in general, clearly at a loss for words. Not to mention how clean terrified she was at the thought of touching him again. Her body had craved his touch every day for the last two years, and had been denied every day for the same stretch of time. If she found herself back beside him in that way, could she ever let him go again? And he looked so small right now, and so hurt, she was scared she'd break him or hurt him further, and it wasn't something she wanted to feel about him, didn't want to think that way about _him_. And it made her feel sick, to think of him being physically weaker than her. But he looked as if he was. And people in hospitals with all those things hooked to them made her edgy and nervous. And that wasn't a way she was use to feeling about Vince. Vince being around her was one thing that normally allowed her to feel like it was ok to stop being so strong for awhile.

She looked at him like he was crazy for telling her to climb into his narrow little bed with him. He really hoped it wasn't because she thought he was crazy to think she would ever want to touch him again. There was a look of wide eyed terror on her face, and the thought that she was scared she would be able to break him in some physical way was just as distasteful. He started to poll his extremities. His arm was really sore, now that he was more aware of it, and his side felt very tight over his left hip. He felt the pull of many stitches in his skin, tight and itchy. He shifted a bit, grimaced. Now his hip was tight and sore as fuck. But he wasn't hurt too bad, all things considered. He had to guess he'd lost enough blood to cause him to black out, and thus the almost death inducing coma had ensued. "Yeah, well my side is hella sore down over my hip, but," he looked at her, "if you come over here already. Come on," he insisted when she didn't move. All he could grab of her was the one curl he still had wrapped around his finger. Her hair was longer than he remembered. He tugged. She slid the chair closer to the bed. "That's a start but not what I meant." He looked at the space under his arm pointedly. "Right up here. Come on already."

She didn't want anything more than she wanted to take him up on what he proposed. But it seemed so wrong. Half an hour ago he'd been the guy who was dying. And now he was the guy trying to get her into his bed. Again. It was almost too much to take. Her crying, which had tapered off, started to pick up again. How could she do what he was asking?

The look on her face was killing him. It wasn't just the runny nose, red ringed eyes, blotchy skin. It was the total look of confusion and desolate pain in her eyes. "I'm not sure that I can get up and go get you, but I will try. And you know I'm serious. Trouble, I hate it when you cry. So just come over here already so you can stop and I can get this knife outta my damn gut, ok?"

"What if someone comes?"

"They think I'm worm food. What will they care?" Her intensified crying let him know it had been the wrong way to go. But then it worked and he stopped caring. She practically launched herself onto him but somehow managed to land carefully, barely touching him.

"That was the worst part! If you die, who's gonna be strong for me? With everyone gone and Jesse hurt and everyone looking to depend on me, who am I gonna depend on if it's not you!? You were the only person who ever made me think you might just be stronger than me. Strong enough to take on some of the burden. If you weren't in the world, who'd be there for _me_?" she sobbed brokenly, guilty for putting that weight on him.

And there was his reason to go on. He wanted to be that man who could be strong for the she wolf so much, he wondered how he hadn't hauled her back to his bed a week after he lost her. "I picked up the phone to call you so many times," he muttered into her hair, settling her where he wanted her with his one usable arm the best he could. She had to be closer. Her clinging to the edge of the bed routine wouldn't do. If he had to live when he had been so sure he had no reason to bother, she had to be close enough to remind him why he'd changed his mind. Her head on his shoulder, her arm across his chest, her right leg pulled up over his stomach to avoid his gun shot wound while still bringing her as close to him as he could get her. He kissed the top of her head.

"Why didn't you?" she asked. Her voice took on an almost childlike tone, sleepy and curious with a touch of petulant impertinence.

"I made you hate me so well that every time you called for Leon or Jesse and I answered you hung up and tried again. You wouldn't even talk to me long enough to ask me to go get one of them."

"As soon as I heard your voice I couldn't get a word out that wasn't yelling at you or breaking down in crying. Hanging up was the only way I could go."

"You shoulda yelled," he murmured.

"You shoulda called."

"I shoulda called." He sighed into her hair. It gave him a good excuse to smell her. She still just smelled like her, and not like hospital. It was like home. "So, you gonna tell me why the kid's here, or just repeatedly try to scare me by pointing out he's in the room across the hall?"

"I thought you knew."

"I don't know anything after the whole hanging on the side of a speeding transfer truck thing stopped being current. I know Jesse raced for slips, lost and took off. But how did he get hurt?"

"He finally went home and Tran followed him there. Shot the place up and hit Jesse three times."

"Is he gonna be ok?"

"Yeah. He's ok. He's gonna be ok." She tipped her head back so she could look at his face. "Are you?"

"I am now. If you're staying."

"I'm staying long enough to see Jesse back on his feet. No one knows I'm here shy of Jess and Angelo. And you."

"Angelo?"

"Yeah, Angelo. The friend who taught me Italian. He's been my best friend since I was fifteen. V?"

"Um," he answered back. He could feel his heart racing, now that things were calmed down. It couldn't be good. He hoped he wasn't lying to her when he told her he was going to be ok. Now. Could a person decide to die, start to make it happen, and then just change their mind?

"The cops and hospital think my name's Jessica and that I'm Jesse's twin sister. You gotta remember it."

"Cops?"

"Cops everywhere. Jesse told me a bit about what went down." She cut Vince off when he went to talk. "And I don't wanna know any more than he told me. Because if I know something that the cops'll want, and it'll save some trouble for Jesse down the road, I'll tell them. So don't tell me anything I shouldn't know. For my own good and for whatever feelings you still have for Dominic fuckin' Toretto."

"Why're you so pissy with Dom?"

"Why am I so pissy with Dom? Are you serious?" Her eyebrows met over her nose in a fierce scowl. "_Oh_, you'd mean _aside_ from letting Jesse bet the slip to the Jetta, leaving him alone terrified and running from some homicidal sociopath on a motorcycle while he went off to hijack a fucking transfer truck mid-flight down a god damn state highway in the middle of the god damn daytime in fucking Honda Civics! You mean _aside_ from all that, right?"

"Temp, you can't blame it all on him."

"I can lay whatever the fuck I want to at his feet. I was there for a first hand example of Don iron-fist Dominic and how he ran his house, remember? If he was going to play ruler of all he surveyed to that extent, he had no call not watching out for Jesse better. If he was such a high and mighty ruler, he had no right to run off when he'd led you and Jesse into such consequences for _his_ actions."

Vince sighed. How was he stupposed to set her straight and not alienate her again straight away? "The whole thing was my idea."

"Excuse me?" She met his eyes, and the absolute truth of his statement was found there. "I knew you were kinda an idiot, but this takes the cake. And I can't even kick your ass because you're already incapacitated in the hospital. Your idea?"

"Kinda." Vince sighed. "Dom was in money trouble. He wanted shit for the car he couldn't buy. The garage wasn't busy as he woulda liked. The business deal he had on the go with Tran went sour and it didn't get better when Dominic slept with Tran's sister. I offered Dom the money to bail out the store and fix up his car, but he wouldn't take it. He's always known a bit about what I was into, and he kept after me that there had to be something I could get him into for him to earn what he needed. He wouldn't stop about it. This guy had always been after me to pull a job like the trucks off, but I was never interested. It was too dangerous, even with such a huge payoff. But then, I took a good look at my life and realized I just didn't care anymore. I told my source to hook it up and told Dom I had something for him."

"And even knowing the level of smart you work at, they took your word for it being a good idea." She shook her head. "Priceless. If I ever see Leo again I'ma kick his ass into next year. Into next century. For thinking this was a good idea and for letting Jess throw down the fuckin' pink slip to his crazy ass dad's Jetta."

"It wasn't high risk for them. All they had to do was drive. They're all good at driving. I took on most of the personal risk. It was the only way I could basically give Dom the money and have him take it."

"You got my baby cousin involved in the first ones though. What if one of you had died?"

"Jesse can't be your baby cousin, he's older than you," Vince chuckled before the action pulled his skin tight over his gunshot and he winced with a grimace and a cough. It was ok, because his next statement was a sober one anyway. "I guess I was sorta hoping I would."

"Why?"

He lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. "Seemed easier than trying to figure out my fucked up life." He looked down into her face. Her eyes were closed. Her skin was pale, and there were dark circles under her closed lashes. He didn't want to talk about why he wanted to die anymore. Not with her and not tonight. She was hanging on the edge of a precipice by her finger nails. She had always struck him as resilient, like a flexible sapling rather than a rigid tree, but she had already bent to her breaking point tonight. Any further bent and she'd break in two. When another lone tear leaked out under her closed lids, this fact was confirmed for him and then some. "When was the last time you slept?"

"This afternoon," she muttered back, trying not to start crying in earnest again.

"For how long? Five minutes?"

"Three hours or so." She yawned, opened her eyes and checked the clock. "I guess I should go home, go to bed. Get some rest and let you get some too."

"When was the last time you slept before three hours this afternoon?"

"Couple hours last night in the truck. I'll be ok."

"I'm sure you will be but you ain't drivin' nowhere the way you are right now. You're barely alive."

"You are not in any position to issue orders. _You_ are drugged outta your damn mind, tied to two IVs, and barely conscious."

"What'll Jess do if you kill yourself on the way to the house?" He left what will I do unsaid. He figured it went without saying.

"I'm not that tired." She yawned hugely to make herself into a liar. "Besides that, where do you think I should sleep? On the floor? In the truck?"

"How about right where you are?"

"I can't stay in your hospital bed for the night, V. Someone'll just come along and kick me out sooner or later and then I'll be driving home in the middle of the night. They must check on you at some sort of regular interval all day and night long."

"Baby, I've done nothing but sleep for days. I'll be awake all night. I'll make sure they leave you alone."

She wanted what he was offering her more than anything. To sleep in his arms, his heart beating under her ear. Proof he was alive all night long. "Maybe I could just take a little nap before I leave. Just until the nurse comes and kicks me out."

"Ok. You go to sleep until the nurse comes." He smiled at her, not that she knew. He was pretty sure she was practically asleep already. Of course, she was right. He was totally fucked out of his mind on morphine. But he still knew where he wanted her.

"V?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm glad you're not gonna die." The childlike tone was back in her voice. Exhaustion was clearly taking its toll.

"I'm glad you came. Even if it was only for Jesse, and because he made you check on me. And I'm glad I'm not gonna die too."

"Wanna know a secret?"

"Sure." He wanted her to get the sleep she clearly needed. But he'd missed her. He'd missed her smell, her sound, the feel of her skin, the weight of her. He'd missed the quiet talks alone, just the two of them, when he could open up and be himself because her opinion of him wasn't based on how hard and tough he was. Just the opposite, in fact. He wished he knew where he stood well enough to lean down—if he even could—and taste her mouth. He missed the taste of her too.

"I came for Jesse. But I came without calling or trying to find out anything about what went on because I wanted there to be a chance I'd see you."

"Do you wanna know a secret back?"

"Ok."

"The whole time we were doin' what we were doin' I was hopin' you'd catch wind of it from Leon or Jesse and come down here to kick my ass for it bein' my idea in person. I just never figured on the pair of them bein' able to keep their fuckin' mouths closed so well. First time for everything."

She smiled softly at the wry tone to his statement. "How much of this are you gonna remember tomorrow?"

He thought honestly about how drugged he was, how his head felt. He'd done a few drugs in his day. But nothing to compare to this. "Not much. Bits and pieces."

"Then I have another secret."

"Yeah?"

"Um-hmm." She sighed. "I think I was in love with you, before." Telling him when he likely wouldn't remember was dirty pool. But if he died, she didn't want it to be never knowing that she had loved him. And somewhere in his subconscious, he'd always know now. He'd hear her saying the words when he wasn't thinking about her. If he somehow didn't make it, he'd still know. She knew she would never say it to him were he in his right frame of mind. But that didn't change the fact that she thought he had to know.

He could only blame the drugs. "I think I was in love with you too."

She settled herself more comfortably beside him. She had been loved. The vague sense of comfort and safety because he was in her world returned, strengthened. Tested its new, bigger, stronger wings out in the blackness of the night and found them sound, sure. "Night." She reached up to kiss his cheek.

He saw his chance, turned his head so her lips found his. Her hand crept up to rest against his cheek as she allowed their lips to remain pressed together for a moment. The kiss was pure, sweet. Almost innocent. He really didn't know if either had ever offered the other a gesture so totally devoid of heat before. It was he who broke the contact. It was put an end to things, or take them farther and he wasn't sure if she could handle it, would want it, or if he even could. She needed to sleep. The translucent quality of her skin and the dark smudges under her eyes worried him. She hadn't been taking care of herself. "Get some sleep T." One she was out, he slowly managed to wiggle her around so she was carefully draped across his chest. Her head found the hollow where it fit so well, her lips brushing the side of his neck and her heart beating against his, chest to chest.


	9. You Save Me

**Lose the Road**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 8 – **You Save Me**

"_**When I'm a ship tossed around on the waves, up on a high wire that's ready to break. When I've had just about all I can take, baby, you, baby you save me"**_

He could only figure that no matter how much sleep a person had had in the last week, it wasn't enough on the level of morphine he was being fed because he managed to fall asleep again. He woke some time later to the presence of not one but two nurses in his room. But much to his surprise they hadn't tried to remove the still sleeping Tempest. Rather, one of them had her wrist in her hand as she took the sleeping woman's pulse.

"It's the darndest thing," the nurse whispered to her companion. "When I checked him last his heart rate was close to a hundred. We figured he'd be dead within twelve hours."

"Now it's down to seventy?" The other nurse asked, curious. "Just like that? In a matter of hours?"

"Yeah. But it gets weirder. Take the girl's pulse and watch his monitor."

Tempest's wrist changed hands. She slept on as the second nurse found where her pulse beat steady against the translucent skin of her wrist with her eyes on his heart monitor. "Are their hearts beating with the exact same rhythm?"

"Yes. Have you ever seen the like? I mean, seventy beats a minute is low for a woman in the first place. She looks very fit, so that's explained at least. But for his to drop so extremely, right down to normal over night and to keep the exact same rhythm as hers." She shook her head, setting the girl's hand back where she'd found it. "Of course, we really should get the doctor and get her up and off of him."

Oh no they didn't. "You wake her, and the second I'm able I'll find you and kill you."

Use to all sorts, his harsh words didn't really phase the nurse whose nametag proclaimed her Martha. Somehow she managed to keep her expression and tone from showing any shock she might have felt at her comatose patient threatening to off her at his earliest opportunity when she hadn't even known he'd woken. "Now honey," she began, her tone one which had surely calmed hundreds of agitated patients over her career. "You're badly injured. You haven't even been awake in a week. The last thing you need is a dead weight on top of you while you try to get better."

"She's the only reason why I'm gonna get better, so leave her alone and let her sleep. It was hard enough to convince her to get on the edge of the damn bed. If you scare her off, I'll find you. She's fine where she is. I can handle her just fine, and it's not like it's the first time."

"V?" Tempest questioned sleepily. She wasn't really awake. Her mind was just testing reality as she thought it was verses what it actually was. She had a recollection of telling Vince she'd loved him once and hearing him answer in kind. She thought he'd convinced her to spend the night beside him and now she felt as if she was once again moulded to the length of him. But surely that couldn't actually be her reality? It had to be some fantasy her subconscious had created to lull her into a state relaxed enough to allow her to find rest.

"I'm still here," he caught himself about to call her Temp and stopped just in time. Damn drugs! "Trouble." He couldn't call her Jessica. She'd never remember her alias in her barely coherent state. She hadn't even had five hours sleep yet. He had no doubts that in her mind, they were in his room with a lot less clothes on in his bed, having just exhausted each other. Twice. His good arm rubbed her back absently. "You need to go back to sleep. It's still night time."

The right voice calling her Trouble put a sleepy grin on her face. It wasn't a dream, or a fantasy. The skin under her lips was his. It really was the scent of him filling her mind with thoughts of safety and comfort. "You're sure this is still ok?"

"It's perfect. Sleep." Her fingertips traced his collarbone unconsciously for a few moments before she slid back under the dark pull of exhaustion. He'd always wondered at her fascination with the ridge of bone along his chest, but her soft touch there was comforting, familiar.

Nurse Martha cocked an eyebrow. "Trouble? I thought her name was Jessica and she was the other one's brother."

"She is and it is. She has a nickname. I gave it to her. Shit, why does this matter?"

"Aren't you scared you'll wake her?"

"Naw, she'll sleep through a world war now that she's out again. She heard a couple nurses talking about how I was gonna die yesterday. Shook her."

"Well, you were going to die. You seem to have made a very remarkable turnaround."

"She needed me to."

"Just like that?"

"She _needed_ me to. _She _needs _me_. Listen, I can't stop telling you shit I don't really wanna tell you, likely because you have me drugged to the point I'm so high I'm practically on the fuckin' moon. Can you fuck off now so I can go back to sleep, or back to feelin' her up, or whatever the fuck, without an audience?"

Nurse Martha giggled. "I suppose so, since you asked so nicely. But no feeling her up. Not until you've been off death's doorstep for longer than four hours. Deal?"

"Whatever it takes to get you the hell outta my room."

"Ok, but you should try to get some more rest. Tomorrow morning when the word gets out you woke up, you're going to have one hell of a day."

"Thanks for the heads up," he muttered back at her, his head tipping sideways so his cheek could rest on Tempest's. The last thing he heard was Nurse Martha talking to her silent companion about how 'weren't they just the cutest thing ever? The way she 'needed' him and the way he stood for her.' That 'awww' tone was in her voice, that tone women normally reserved for babies and cute puppies. Had he been able to, he'd have gotten up and kicked Nurse Martha's ass all around the hospital. Instead, he did the only thing he could do. His hand slid down Tempest's back to rest on her ass. The last thing he heard before he fell asleep again was the forcefully restrained laughing of the nurse.

When Tempest woke up the day had broken and she felt like she had slept too long, leaving herself with a feeling like she was operating under deep, heavy water. A quick check of her cell phone showed her that she had been asleep for quite some time. It was disorienting to wake up on something warm and alive rather than a cold, inanimate mattress, but it brought back memories of much happier times for her.

And that was dangerous territory wasn't it? Happy certainly hadn't lasted long. Hadn't lasted was likely the understatement of the century. Happy had shattered into a million splintered pieces that the most skilled forensics team on earth wouldn't have been able to piece back together. So what the hell was she doing allowing herself to remember how it could be for her with him? This wasn't unlike the last time. Due to something stupid done on his part he was going to leave her again. Leave her alone to break into pieces that would never quite be glued back together correctly again. Last time it had been by his own choice, this time it would be by the choice of Officer Goodcop but in the end it was the same thing. Either way, she hadn't been able to have him then and she couldn't have him now.

She'd done her duty to Jesse. She'd come in, saw the condition Vince was in, and now she could leave, fully able to report back to her cousin that his friend would live. Whether he'd ever live his life outside the walls of a prison remained to be seen. But that certainly wasn't her problem. And she had enough of them to worry about. So now her only worry was how to get away from his side without waking him and thus necessitating a conversation about where she was going, when she would return, and what was occurring outside the four walls of his room.

She slowly started to extract herself from under Vince's arm. It was 9 o'clock in the morning. She figured she'd get up, do her report to Jesse and then head back to the fort to get cleaned up. Then she'd get a bite to eat and head back to sit with Jesse for awhile. She got out from under Vince's arm so easily she knew that the nurses had not turned down his morphine drip over the course of the night.

What the fuck was she supposed to do about Vince? To say she didn't want anything to do with him was the biggest understatement she'd ever heard. But he was, or at least had been, dying. Could she be the girl who left someone to die alone, with no one, because of spite for something he'd done two years ago? If she told herself she didn't want anything to do with him often enough, would she convince herself?

Did she have something to put in perspective here? Did her personal involvement make what he'd done back then seem worse because of how necessarily close she'd been to the situation? Could she deem what he'd done cheating when they'd never made any official commitments to each other, not even for the two weeks those commitments were even possible? She had, after all, dated Jim in the middle. However, at that time they'd been officially not having anything to do with each other, and when he'd done what he'd done, there had been no such official break in their _thing_.

Given he'd admitted the feelings that he'd had for her had been similar to those she'd had for him, she knew she didn't have what he'd done out of context. He'd done what he'd done out of some misguided opinion she was better off without him. And she hated him for it. But she wouldn't let him be all alone in the hospital for his last days of freedom and she knew it. She knew she wasn't that cruel and heartless.

She laid Vince's arm carefully across his body and went to slide off the edge of the bed. Just as she was about to move, the door opened and the nurse walked in. Tempest put a finger to her lips to indicate quiet. She did not want the nurse waking Vince up before she could escape. She needed some space to think. The nurse nodded to show she understood and Tempest stood up slowly, glancing furtively at Vince the whole time. He snored once, shifted, but didn't wake.

Tempest crossed to the door, and by proxy the nurse. The latter indicated she wanted to see her in the hall. Tempest nodded her agreement and followed 'Martha' out the door.

"Who _are_ you?" Martha questioned the second the door was closed behind them. While there was a small look of the boy to the girl, she didn't think it was enough for them to be siblings, let alone twins. She also didn't think that someone who hadn't seen their brother in 5 years had had time to fall so very far into love with his friend.

Hmm, how to answer that one, Tempest mused, fighting to keep a smirk off her face. She felt like she had more identities than Bond at this exact moment in time. "I'm Jesse's sister." She finally went with the safe answer that toed the party line she had created for this party in the first place.

"Umhmm, and you told the desk when you got here you hadn't seen him in five years. So how'd you come to know that one," she asked, pointing at Vince's door.

_Shit_, Tempest thought. She'd only been down a day and she was fucking up the story already. The truth might work. "I lied."

"Umhmm." Nurse Martha nodded to show she'd already figured that out. "About what, exactly?"

"About not having seen Jess in 5 years. I came to visit him a few years ago for a few weeks. While I was staying with him I had a," she struggled to put her and Vince into a few words, "a thing, with Vince. It ended. Badly. And I haven't had anything to do with Jesse or the rest of his housemates since."

"So what drove you to sleep in his hospital bed all night then?" Nurse Martha clearly wasn't convinced. And if Tempest didn't miss her guess, the nurse was also being protective. Of Vince. Against _her_. Oh hell no.

"Because Jesse wanted to know how he was. And he didn't trust any of ya'll to tell it to him straight. So he sent me. And I didn't have any idea who was in there until then. But I had heard two nurses talking about the man in that room and his slow, painful dying act. So I went to check on him for Jesse and sure enough he was dying. Do you know what it's like to fall in love with someone from the moment you meet them, contemplate giving up your life for them? To make a new one? With them? And then find them with some vapid whore whose name you'd be willing to bet they don't even know the night you go to tell them that you've _chosen_ them over your own _life_?" Tempest worked herself up into a fine state by the time she was finished explaining to Martha her history with Vince, and she could see by the look on the other woman's face she would never have judged such a good looking man as Vince as being capable of doing that to a girl. "Don't judge a book by the cover!"

"That should explain why you looked and ran, not spent the night."

Martha was such a practical name for such a practical woman, Tempest thought with an internalized sigh. More painful honesty? "Love and hate have such a fine line." She gave the nurse a tight smile.

"So you think you still love him?"

Tempest groaned. "I dunno. What's it matter to you anyway?"

Nurse Martha looked up and down the corridor before dragging Tempest into another patient room, a room that Tempest noted on entry was vacant. "They're going to take him to prison. Your brother is safe because when he was brought in here shot and from where gives him an alibi. They know that Vince was part of a crime, and when the cops find out he's conscious, they'll be here to question him and when the hospital tells them he's stable enough to be moved, they'll take him to finish recovery in a prison hospital. Then he'll stand trial for what he and all his friends were doing."

"Why on earth are you telling me this?" Tempest was confused. The nurse sounded like Vince's grandmother, and not at all on the side of the law on this one. Shouldn't she be ready to see him go to jail and get out of her hospital?

Martha shrugged. "When you see someone come into a hospital and they're badly hurt, you generally have a good feeling for who will live and who will die. It's just a sixth sense that you develop over years and years of E.R. work. I had him pegged as young and strong and one of the ones who'd make it. I figure I'm looking at the reason why he wasn't going to. That means that whatever he did to you hit him so hard that he decided when he had the choice of go on or don't, he picked don't. He told me last night when you were sleeping that you were the reason he turned around, the fact that you were here and needed him to. I guess I just figure on the basis of that confession out of him, you and he deserve to know that two weeks is all I can buy you. I can't promise you'll even be allowed to see him when the cops find out he's awake."

"Thanks for the head's up." Tempest's mind was spinning with all the information Martha had just imparted.

"Enjoy the time you have. If the cop that's been hanging around is to believed if they get the chance to send him to jail, it'll be for 10-20." Martha left the room and as soon as she was gone Tempest melted into a nearby chair in disbelief.

Vince gone to jail for 20 years. She'd waited 2 already. Waiting to be able to forgive him at least enough to speak to him without throwing things at his overgrown head. And now that she'd come back to L.A. and found out that the time she might be able to have that conversation was now, she had a week, two at the outside and then he was going to be gone from her life for 20 years. And now she had to hold it together and break it to Jesse.

She left the room after a few minutes needed to try and pull herself together and walked into Jesse's room. To anyone outside looking in, it was her same old confident stride. How she managed she didn't know because she had no idea how she was still walking around like everything was ok. She had no idea how to tell Jesse that his only friend still in the country with him was a week away from 10-20 at California State Prison Los Angeles.

She pushed open his door and crossed to his bedside without saying a word. She wasn't sure how yet. She didn't make eye contact because she didn't want to invite any questions. She didn't want to collapse as she relayed her report. He'd trusted her to give it to him straight and she was going to. There was no sense trying to sugar coat anything when he would only find out when the cops carted Vince off in handcuffs anyway.

"It's bad, isn't it?" Jesse asked. He could tell from his cousin's pallor that she didn't have good news to share.

She finally looked Jesse in the eyes. "On two counts. He was dying until last night. Now that he's going to live they'll give him a week, two at the most, to recover and then they'll take him to a prison hospital. The cop told the nurse he's going down for 10-20." She watched Jesse tip his head back onto his pillow with his eyes closed and knew he was fighting tears.

"I should be facing that too. I should have been with them."

"There's no point it in now. Do you think Vince wants you to go to prison? Do you think you'll survive prison life? At least Vince can do the time."

Only the fact a tear ran down her cheek stopped him from telling her in no uncertain terms what he thought about her assessment that Vince could do the time. "I don't want either of us to go to prison."

"I know that Jess, but they have him at the scene, shot up and injured. I don't hold out a lot of hope they won't convict him of armed robbery on the basis of all that."

They both sat in silence for what felt like hours. "You have to save him," Jesse finally broke the silence.


	10. Crazy Thoughts Have Quick Wings

AN: I've been lazy and I haven't been writing out where the chapter titles and quotes came from. Bad me. Chapter 1 was Nothing Could Come Between Us by Theory of a Deadman. Chapter 2, Drink Me by Anna Nalick, Chapter 3, Scratch by Kendall Payne. Chapter 4, Neopolitan Dreams by Lisa Mitchell. Chapter 5, Pictures of You by The Last Goodnight, Chapter 6 the chapter title is from How to Save a Life by The Fray and the quote is from Somewhere, a Clock is Ticking by Snow Patrol. Chapter 7 is Drowning Man by Greenwheel. Chapter 8 is You Save Me by Kenny Chesney. And finally this chapter, chapter 9, is You Save Me by Jem. Now that everyone has been given credit where it's due, I'm going to take a moment to plug a story. Its Knights on the Blacktop Reengineered by The-Knight2000. It is a rewrite of another story but it's different and better, and I'm not just saying that because I beta it, it has some of my characters, and I'm married to the guy who wrote it! Go read it and leave a review, because it deserves more than it's getting. Housekeeping out of the way, onto the story.

**Lose the Road**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 9 – **Crazy Thoughts have Quick Wings**

"_One minute I am fine the next I've lost my mind to a fake fantasy."_

"How do you think I can save him? I don't have the money to hire him a great lawyer, I don't know where to find Dominic so I can set the cops onto him in bargain for Vince's freedom. What do you think I'm gonna do? Smuggle him outta his hospital bed and make a run for the border?!"

"Yes! That's exactly what I think you're going to do!" Jesse answered excitedly. "No one knows who you really are. If you disappear, they won't have any idea where to find you."

"Jesse, I have a life! I cannot be like your shifty friends and run to Mexico!"

"I didn't mean Mexico. Take him home with you. Who'd ever think to look for him there?"

"Say I did entertain this crazy idea of yours. Who'd take care of you? How would I move him? He's on ten kinds of drugs! He's all stitches and bandages!"

"I'll take care of myself. My dad gets out of prison in a few weeks anyway. I lost the stupid Jetta trying to win myself a car so when he gets out and takes the Jetta back, I'd have something to go cruising in with him."

"Your father is not exactly responsible care giver material." Tempest gave Jesse a withering look.

"By the time they let me out I won't need much care giving. You have to do this for me."

"Do I?" Tempest asked with a sneer. Oh did she really? She had to take the person who treated her so badly 2 years ago into her home, and not only that, she had to smuggle him across the border into another country illegally, and then harbour a fugitive! Jesse was ordering her into all that on what? A whim? She jumped up and started pacing agitatedly. "You want me to make him a fugitive and then harbour him in my home?! How'm I supposed to explain that one to everyone at home? Explain who he is and where he came from?"

"I dunno!" Jesse roared back. "I don't know," he added more calmly. "But do you really want him to go to prison?"

"No, but I don't think he can run from the law in Canada for the rest of his life either. What if they put some sort of international wanted list out and he's on it? How's he gonna work without some sort of visa he won't be getting as an illegally immigrated fugitive from the law?"

"Like anyone on PEI is going to check his papers or follow America's Most Wanted. Never mind. Let him go to prison. Forget I asked. It was stupid, and too much to ask."

Tempest spun on him. "Too much to fucking ask, he says, in some snot nosed kid tone of voice, like I'm refusing to take in a dog he found last week for awhile until he gets better. Shit, you're asking me to take in a human being, who'll have a most wanted sign on his head, who'll be surly and sick and sore. A human who as much as cheated on me the last time I had anything to do with him. It _is_ a fucking lot to ask."

Jesse sighed. "I know it's a lot to ask. But what else can we do?"

"Um, let fate take its course?" She sat wearily back in her chair. The conversation to hand was swiftly tiring her out as if it had been going on for hours not minutes. "Jesse," she sighed. "If I tell V I'm smuggling him out of the hospital and out of the country at great personal risk to myself if we get caught, what're the odds he's even going to go along with it?"

It was Jesse's turn to sigh. "Not great, I know. But I think you could talk him around to it."

"How would I even get him out of the hospital? It's not like he's up to a nice long walk down 14 flights of stairs and I don't see how I'm meant to just wander down the lift with him."

"We have a week to figure it out."

Vince came to with a groan. He found himself alone in his room and he knew that wasn't right, even though he didn't remember everything from the night before. He checked the clock on his wall and it was 11am. He started polling extremities in the cold light of day. It was worse than he remembered. He was weak as a kitten and could barely move. He certainly wasn't getting out of bed any time soon.

He was pondering where Tempest had gone when a large black man entered his room. The bad suit and confident demeanour marked him a plain clothes detective to Vince even before the shiny brass shield was flashed his way. He'd seen enough cops in his day to mark them easily enough on sight.

_So it beings_.

He looked at the cop and the cop looked back. An impasse, as neither intended to speak first. The cop gave in first, but did it in such a way it wasn't much of a capitulation. "So, a fine state of affairs you've gotten yourself into son."

Vince shrugged. "Been banged up worse." He didn't intend to give anything away that easily.

The cop smiled knowingly. "Not what I meant. Was more to do with you being left to hold the bag on 4 stints of 10-20 alone, since your friends all skipped town." The cop pulled up a chair without an invite and sat down. His pose was deceptively relaxed, he appeared the epitome of indifference, but both men knew they were playing a game in which there could be only one winner, and strategy was key. Both were simply wondering who would play the other better.

"While I had wondered at the lack of company, I have no idea what you meant by skipped town. What friends?"

"Son, let's not bullshit each other. You know I mean Toretto as well as I do. You don't give up his location, where he's hiding with one Letitia Rodriguez, Leon Strong and Mia Toretto, you're going down for this all alone."

"Going down for what?" Vince envied the cop his relaxed pose. He was sort of stuck for options, flat on his back in a hospital bed.

The cop chuckled, but it wasn't with amusement. "If that's how you want to play this, fine. But remember, I can only recommend the DA cut you a deal if you decide you want to play ball. Tell me where Dominic, Letty and Leon are and not only will I try to get your sentence reduced to 5 years, I'll forget I was going to try to get the sister on something too. The Latina one, she'll survive prison ok. How do you think poor little Mia Toretto will do as some butch lesbian's bitch?"

Much as Vince wanted to put a fist through the large man's face for his words, he couldn't and also, knew he shouldn't let on to being angered. It would just prove the other man was getting to him. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Well, you have another week or two in this little holiday resort before you're well enough to try and take off, and thus well enough to be transferred to the hospital wing at one of our fabulous state run accommodations. You know, the ones with walls, barbed wire and bars on the windows and doors?"

Vince shrugged. "Still dunno what you're talking about."

"Fair enough," the dark man stood up and adjusted his suit jacket over the bulge of his weapon in its harness. He looked toward the door, where he found Tempest standing just inside the room. Neither had noticed her enter while they were doing their stare the other down posturing. "Though you were the other one's sister?"

"I am. But my brother asked about his friend. I came to get an update. Sorry if I'm interrupting."

"Not at all, I was just leaving. Tell your brother he might want to come say goodbye sometime soon. Before he can only say hello through three inches of plexiglass." He left the room with his final dig, said with a smile that tried not to be joyous and failed Vince's way.

When he was gone, Tempest crossed the room. "He's not kidding you know." She had made up her mind the moment the cop gloated about putting Vince in jail. "Give me your phone."

"I don't have my phone." Vince looked confused.

"Well, they haven't arrested you yet, so they won't have taken your things." Tempest started going through the drawers and closet of the room. "The nurse told me the same thing. She says she can stall them for up to two weeks but that's it. After that it'll be obvious you're well enough to survive the move and they'll arrest you."

"What do you want my phone for?"

"I need to make some calls."

"And you don't have a phone of your own?"

"Not one with Bryce's number on speed dial," she admitted with a triumphant smile as she found where the hospital had stored Vince's personal effects not damaged beyond saving on his admittance.

"What do you want Bryce's number for?" Vince asked with a scowl. "If he comes down here the cops'll start asking him questions."

"So? He's not going to turn you in is he?"

"That's not the point. I don't want them poking around his life. He didn't do anything here."

"No, but I need his help."

"With what?" Vince growled, getting fed up with not getting a straight answer.

"I'm springing you free, before they come get you and take you to jail."

Vince looked up at her incredulously. "How exactly do you plan to do that?"

"Well, I really haven't gotten as far as planning how you're going to get out of the hospital. But once I have you in the truck I'm going to drive back to Canada and you're going to come with me."

Vince stared slack jawed at her for a good few minutes while she scrolled through his phone book. "Come again?" he finally voiced.

"You heard me."

"Not properly, obvious. You think you're going to put yourself in danger of getting sent to prison over me?"

"You wanna do 20 years hard time?" she retorted, one eyebrow cocked in question.

"Want is a strong word, but the alternative to me isn't putting you at risk."

"Guess it's a good thing you're not then. It was Jesse's idea. Let's blame him shall we?" She knew her tone was flippantly sarcastic and she knew it would drive him insane. She found Bryce's number with an 'ah ha' and hit send before she could change her mind.

The phone rang out several times while Vince scowled menacingly at her. She figured it had a lot to do with the fact he knew there was nothing he could do about it. The phone was finally answered, not with any customary greeting but with a growled 'where the fuck you been?'

She was taken aback for a moment, then realized of course he'd have Vince saved in his phone, and the name would appear on the screen. "It's me," she corrected lamely.

"Me who?"

She could hear the suspicion in his voice. "Me I can't say over a cell phone. Can you meet me somewhere? Say the usual dive?" There was a moment's silence, and she knew he was frantically thinking. She could almost sense the moment his mind wandered back far enough.

"Temp—"

"Not on this line," she cut him off. "It's bad B. I need to meet you."

"You mean the usual dive I think you do?"

"Think so. I'll see you there in about half an hour?"

"Yeah, ok. Do I want to know where V is?"

"No, but I'll elaborate face to face."

"Sure thing Doll, see you there."

"Yeah," she answered and hung up, already not thrilled the conversation had gone on so long.

"That's just a pay and go phone you know? It's not traceable as mine."

"It is if they already did something to it while you were out cold to monitor if Dom or Leon called." It was clear from the look on his face Vince hadn't thought of that.

"I don't want you dragging Bryce into this mess."

"Why? I'd say he proved he's been in worse messes already."

"That's different."

"How?" She watched the stubborn look cross Vince's face. She didn't understand why. What had she asked that was so hard to answer? Bryce was hard, and just as violent and dangerous as Vince. Just as able to take care of himself. So what was the big deal about getting him involved? Surely the point of having friends was to call on them when you needed help.

He sighed. "Because it's me, and he'll feel obligated to do things he's not really comfortable doing because it's me."

"Why's that? He's your friend. Friends help each other at times like this."

"He's more than a friend."

She cocked a brow. "Oh?"

Vince tipped his head back into the pillows. "Yeah, he's my brother."

"Ok." This revelation floored Tempest just a little and she sat down. She took a moment to get her head around it. "So why didn't Dominic and the rest know who he was? If he's your brother, didn't he grow up around Dom's as well?"

"No. He's my half brother. Same dads, different moms. Our asshole father had a great time going from my mother to his, beating them both and both of us along the way. He wasn't exactly the type to keep a secret. He didn't care that both of them knew about the other, so Bryce and I always knew about each other. He's been through enough with me already. He doesn't need dragging into this mess."

"Maybe he doesn't need it, but now more than ever I think he'd want to know you're here and what's going to happen." She sat on the edge of the bed and brushed some tousled hair off his forehead, watched how shocked he was at her casual touch cross his face. "I won't pressure him into anything he doesn't want to do V, but he deserves to know you're hurt and what's going to happen. If he wants to help me, he does, if he doesn't, he doesn't."

"I don't want your help in this! You're going to end up giving away your whole cover and you're going to end up in jail yourself."

"I think it'll be ok for now. I need to get going if I'm not going to be late."

Vince gave her a short nod, too confused about everything to fully process it all. If she could save him from prison, he wanted to let her. But if she got caught with him, across international lines, she was going down just as hard. What the fuck had Jesse been thinking?


	11. Didn't Know my Own Strength

**Lose the Road**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 10 – **Didn't Know My Own Strength**

"_**Lost sight of my dream. Thought it would be the end of me. I thought I'd never make it through. I had no hope to hold on to, I thought I would break. I didn't know my own strength. And I crashed down, and I tumbled. But I did not crumble." ~ Whitney Houston**_

Bryce sat waiting in the parking lot of the bar, wondering what the fuck was up that Vince hadn't been in touch in days and Tempest was back in the country after all this time, using Vince's phone. To ring _him_! Because he didn't think if she was back in town, _he_ would be her top priority to get back in touch with. He was worried, bordering on nervous. She hadn't sounded like herself. He was aware that who she was 2 years ago wasn't necessarily who she was today, but she'd sounded scared and that wasn't something he associated with a girl who showed up out of the blue to make transactions for stolen auto parts packing a borrowed hand gun.

Just thinking back to it put a smile on his face. Vince had been so gobsmacked when she walked around the nose of that truck, talked smack to them like she knew what she was doing. She'd been supremely confident in a situation she shouldn't have been confident in at all. She went toe to toe with Vince, despite how high into the heights of angry she'd driven him. Either wasn't smart enough or just didn't fear easily enough to know backing down was safer. She'd been so calm and brazen at the same time. So what was wrong to the extreme of wrong to put fear into her now?

He wondered where she was. It was five minutes past her estimate for when she'd meet him already. A big midnight blue truck on 24 inch chrome rims with blacked out windows pulled in but he didn't pay it too much mind. A Cadillac Escalade was a bit out of place in this neck of the woods, but who knew which bad ass had finally made it big time this time? It didn't matter to him. He was waiting for a car painted with storm clouds and ocean waves. Which meant it was his turn to be shocked when he watched her climb down out of the huge Cadillac. What the hell had convinced her to give up the rarity that Vince had pulled in some serious favours to have finished for her, even while he bitched and moaned about how his chick shouldn't have a faster ride than him? Even while he'd barely restrained himself from punching Bryce in the face every time he pointed out she _was_ _not _his chick. Because of his own stupidity, to add insult to injury.

He got off his bike and started her way. She'd changed, and it wasn't just the stress marring her pretty face that made him think so. She'd filled in more, was a bit curvier while still being muscular to a point most women didn't achieve. Her hair was longer than he remembered, touching her ass where before it had been hitting just below her elbows. Her jeans were fitted to a point he didn't jive with her previous baggy style, when everything had clearly been bought at a time she was bigger. He was reassured she was still the girl he'd found so perfect by the fact she was wearing a black wife beater with the jeans, no make-up and sunglasses pushed up into the riot of curls.

"Hey Doll. How you been?" he asked as he walked across the parking lot to meet her. When she burst into tears at his simple question he knew the answer was 'not good'. He didn't even think before hugging her hard, his cheek to her curls. "I guess I knew if you came down here instead of stubborning it out and making him come to his senses and go get you, it's not good," he murmured into her hair. She shook her head no against his chest. "Let's go inside." He didn't wait for her answer, just kept his arm around her shoulders to guide her into the building. "Ok, spill it. What's wrong?"

She took a few minutes to compose herself after they were seated in the same dark corner booth so many people around the place regarded as Bryce's own personal seat. "Well, you know what the team was up to." She looked up and saw the confusion in his eyes, shook her head as a realization washed over her. "No you don't. Of course you don't. He knew it was stupid and you woulda tried to talk him outta it so he didn't tell you."

Bryce shook his head. "Gotta admit you lost me T. Who didn't tell me what?" He watched as she looked around the room nervously.

Tempest leaned in closer to Bryce and lowered her voice just a shade above a whisper. "The team was boosting transfer trucks. Transfer trucks being driven down interstate highways at the time." She cocked an eyebrow at the disbelieving look on his face. "It was stupid's idea." A roll of her eyes accentuated her statement.

Bryce felt the colour drain out of his face. Vince fucked up his life, Vince couldn't cope with just how bad, Vince couldn't see the right thing to do was just what Bryce had told the girl—go get her back in person—so he decided to fuck up everyone else's life right along with him. Figured. And now because however it had ended had brought Tempest back into his life, clearly against her will, he knew it had to have ended badly. "Has he killed himself?"

Tempest laughed sharply, felt the anger well up behind it, almost hysterical. "Tried to. Almost managed." She shook her head. "Dominic, wanting money for bigger, faster car parts and not able to make enough of it to buy them all. He knew Vince was into things that made better money than lube jobs and making sandwiches so he started bugging him to hook them up with something big time. Vince always said no, because he knew anything that big time was also going to be that dangerous that it wasn't worth it. And then the shit with me'n him went down and he decided to hook Dom up with something that would bring in the money but would allow most of the team to just sit in a car and drive, that would allow Vince to take on most of the danger. Because he says he fucked up his life so bad, nothing mattered. That and he hoped I'd get wind of it and come down here to kick his ass." She snorted in derision. "Like picking up the fucking phone wouldn't have worked too."

"Where is he?"

"Hospital, waiting to be well enough to walk, sit up, feed himself, all so they can take him to prison for 20 years because they can't find Dominic, Letty or Leo and we both know he's not going to give them up, even if he does know where they're holed up. Which we both know he does."

"Maybe you should tell me the whole story from the beginning?"

"Maybe. But maybe you wanna grab us a couple drinks first? This is gonna take a while." She watched as Bryce strode to the bar, ordered and returned, a Corona in one hand and a rum and Coke in the other. He put the mixed drink in front of her, and took a pull of his beer, watching her. Waiting. "Well, they had to get the cars ready for some big race show in the desert. Biggest event of the year and legal as well, from what Jesse tells me. Organized in the desert on abandoned land so it's fully sanctioned. But for the sake of his 'rep' Dom and the team had to do well. So he wanted a bunch of stuff he couldn't afford in the run up to Race Wars for the cars. He finally broke Vince into setting up a deal for them. Heisting shipments of electronics mid-delivery."

"Wait, wait. I heard about this in the news. They got the first so many without incident but then the truckers started to cotton onto it, and the fact the cops couldn't pull their heads out of their asses long enough to figure out what they were going to do about it. So they started arming themselves for some good old fashioned eye for an eye."

"Yeah, that was them. But even when they had enough made to bank roll ten teams to five different Race Wars they didn't stop. I guess Dom got greedy, Vince was still alive which meant to date he'd failed to attract my attention, and the rest of the team got off on the rush of it all. All Leon, Jesse and Letty had to do was drive a car to distract a trucker. They took a break from it to go to Race Wars. But Leon took his turn at being Mr Stupid and let my cousin bet the pink slip to his crazy ass dad's Jetta against some Asian pompinaio."

"I didn't grow up around baldie's house. Asian what now?"

Tempest looked mildly discomforted. "Cocksucker."

Bryce cocked an eyebrow at her.

"Well, I don't think I'm too far off considering what comes a bit later. So Jesse is terrified to hand over the car, seeing as it's not his and as I've said his dad is crazy, and takes off. And then when Tran confronts Dominic, Dom chooses to kick the shit out of him in front of oh, about ten thousand other racers. Which makes Tran look an idiot so he takes off to find Jesse. Then the fucking moron team without a brain between them figures rather than go find Jesse before Tran does or before he does something else stupid, we'll take off tonight and go do this big job we have lined up. We'll just do it without him and find him later. You know, if the insane Asian asshole known to carry around a Mac-10 doesn't blow him to bits first."

"So they headed out that night to do the job. But it turns out the guy Vince told them all was a cop and they all told him wasn't, _was_. And when Brian the pig realized that it was them doing the heists no matter how much he was enjoying doing Mia and wished it wasn't, he decided to chase after them and stop them, seems like. But he failed. By the time he found them, Letty had already flipped her car, Leon had already gone back to see if she was alive and Vince was already attached to a speeding transfer truck whose driver had a shot gun and used it to blow Dom's heater matrix and assorted other goodies under the hood and basically destroyed his car. Leaving Vince hanging off the side of the truck by his arm while the driver took pot shots at him with a 12 gauge."

"Ok, so then what? Since he's in the hospital he obviously got saved off the truck."

"Yeah, the cop got him off. Then had to send him to the hospital in a helicopter since this all happened miles outside Coachella in the middle of the bloody desert. Then Dominic decides he better go find Jesse before they all run off to Mexico or where ever the fuck, likely about 12 hours after Jesse took off. But Jess came home before Dom could find him, and Tran followed him home, and tried to shoot him to death. So I get the phone call from some random guy I met a few times at races telling me that my cousin is in the hospital all alone after taking three to the chest. That the rest of the team bailed. I only came down here because Hector said the whole team bailed. It was Jesse who told me that Vince was in the same ward, on the same floor, across the hall from him. After I heard the nurses talking about how the man in there was dying."

Bryce could see she was clearly in pain, not quite sure what to do and barely keeping it together.

"I wasn't ready to see him again yet. I woulda been someday but it wasn't now. But now here I am and there he is. And first he was going to die, and now that I _am_ ready to fight it out, after already waiting two years for him and to be ready for this, he's going to jail for 10-20."

"He's a fucking idiot," Bryce growled. How many times had he told Vince to get out of his funk, get up off his fucking ass and go get the girl? And what did Vince choose to do? Fuck up everything and get caught for his friend's stupid idea while they all bailed. Fucking stupid!

"I knew something wasn't right. I came down under a fake name so no one would know I was here, which was why I cut you off on the cell line but I thought you'd wanna know."

He watched as she shrugged, took a pull of Coke, kicked back into the seat back of the booth all nonchalantly, like it wasn't no thing. Trying to pretend she wasn't bothered. "Since you barely knew me then, I'm betting there's more to this than you thinking I deserve to know."

"Yeah, well, I thought you might wanna help me smuggle him outta the hospital and into my truck where I planned to kidnap him across the Canadian border, but the longer I been sitting here the worse an idea that sounds."

Bryce barked out a quick laugh. It slipped out and surprised him, but she was just like he remembered her, sitting up in this bar saying things to shock the shit out of him. She was going to help Vince become a fugitive of the law, and she just sat there kicked back in a dingy booth in some jeans and a wifebeater, reclining with a rum and coke and announced it to him like she was telling him the weather. "Just like that?"

She sighed, pushed curls out of her face with a distracted air. "No, not just like that. He's fucked up B. Tubes and shit everywhere fucked up. They're fairly sure the cops won't try to move him out of the real hospital into the prison one for a week or two, but dependent on how much recovering he does in the mean time, there won't be anything just like that about it. Its gonna be fuckin' hard. How'm I supposed to get someone who practically doubles my weight and can't hardly walk down off the 14th floor alone _and_ have no one notice?"

"Better start by drugging him unconscious because otherwise he's not going to go with you anyway. Do you know what'll happen to you if you do pull this off and then get caught not only aiding and abetting a fugitive, but also helping that fugitive cross state and international lines? You'll end up in jail right along with him!"

"That about summarizes his opinion of the whole idea, yeah. But maybe if he was free, there'd be a chance someone could come up with an idea to get the charges dropped. Besides, Jesse's right, who's gonna think to look for him in redneck Hicksville where I'm from?"

"Maybe no one, but how the fuck do you intend to get him there if he's that hurt?" Bryce was frantically trying to come up with a way he could see making it work. He didn't want Vince somewhere where he'd never see him again, but he wanted him in jail for the rest of his youth even less.

"I just don't know." Tempest shrugged, looking down into what was left of her drink. "I mean, in theory the back of the truck is big enough for him to lay stretched out with the rear seats down. It'd be dangerous, but it's that or jail." She pulled a face and finally met his eyes again. "I'm being selfish. I don't want him to go away when we've just gotten this second chance. I don't know if I could wait 20 years for him to get out."

Bryce shrugged back at her. "Well, realistically if they're saying 10-20 it's more likely gonna end up on the 10 end. They'll be tossing the 20 out there to try and intimidate him into turning in the team, which you already correctly realized he'll never do. But if he gets sentenced to 10 years, if he mostly behaves himself, he'll be out in 5."

"Yeah, if we find some really really awesome lawyer willing to take on his case for free. I can't afford to hire him some hotshot lawyer. And Vince, behave himself? You think there's a chance of that happening?"

"Yeah, he mostly keeps to himself so it comes across as good behaviour. And I can get him a lawyer but I don't think it's going to help much when we both know he's going to refuse to play ball and make a deal, give up the rest of his friends."

Tempest tipped her head back against the seat. "Yeah, that's what I thought. What am I meant to do here?" Bryce only shrugged so she continued. "I have Jesse begging and encouraging me to break the law and kidnap him, and I'm tempted. But he won't go, and there are cops everywhere, and I doubt a 35 hour car ride is going to be good for him in the state he's in. But under it all is the fact I don't want to leave him here again. I don't know if I _can_ leave him here again. I told myself the next time I came back here would be when he came and made me, or when I came down to kill him because he _didn't_ come make me."

Bryce looked at the woman he could love like a sister and thought of the man who _was_ his brother, laying in the hospital and too ridiculously loyal to even get in contact with his own brother to let him know what was up, out of some misguided thoughts of protecting what was left of his family. He felt all his long held convictions start to crumble into dust. Vince was supposed to grow up enough to go get the girl. He wasn't supposed to end himself up in jail. The one woman he could imagine his brother settling down enough with to buy a house, get a real job and make a real life for himself over was going to end up out of his reach, because a woman like her wouldn't wait 10 or 15 years to have him. Would she?

It was a risk he wasn't willing to take. "How do you know they won't just trace you back to who you really are and find him?"

"I had a friend take care of it."

He got a feeling like he wasn't going to get anything else out of her. "How so?"

Tempest just stared at him after he asked his question. She didn't want to implicate Angelo. But when she took a step back to analyze the situation she realized she was asking Bryce to break the law on the strength of her position. Her plan. "Well, he's a bit of a super hacker. Cracker, whatever term they use for it these days. Black hat, Jesse tells me, which means he has no trouble doing what he does for profit and illegal purposes. I just, I dunno," she shook her head. "I knew that whatever saw Leon not call me about all this was that bad that I didn't want anyone to know who I was or why I was here, you know?"

"Back to Leon again, huh?"

Tempest felt herself getting defensive. Who was Bryce to question her relationship with Leon? "Yeah, Leon. Who's been a fucking way better friend to me lately than your boy. At least he called me every once in awhile, sent emails, made an effort. I haven't heard from Vince since the day I caught him with some random blonde whore in the basement and left."

"I just want you to be clear about what you're getting into here if you go through with it, Doll. If you actually make a break for it across country boarders with a fugitive with you, you're gonna be stuck with him for the foreseeable future. Maybe forever. There won't be any going back or moving on. He'll be with you and you and I both know, no matter what you think of him or whether or not you want him back as your boyfriend, he's never going to see you with another man. If you go through with this, it's you and him, likely forever unless one of you kills the other or he gets cleared and comes home. There will be no option for you to pick Leon if that's what you want, if you go through with this."

"If I wanted to pick Leon I could have done it at any point in the last two years," Tempest pointed out in a tone of voice which made it clear she was pissed at Bryce and thought he had the mental abilities of a small child.

"Fair enough. I'm still not sure what about this Angelo guy and whatever he's done for you makes you sure you won't be found out and busted."

"Well, Angelo gave me a fake identity which he added into the database of Social Security as Jesse's sister. So any checks they do on me will turn up real enough records of Jessica Adams. Real records of my company, my birth, identity, all of it. Plus he gave me fake registration papers and VIN numbers for the truck, fake credit cards. If anyone asks after the real Tempest, work thinks I've been with Angelo and Angelo will have no trouble lying for me, being my alibi and faking CCTV footage to prove I was at his if he has to. My car's been parked there for the whole time. I figure before anyone would suspect me they'd just figure that Vince broke out of the hospital and ran off to Mexico to find the rest of his friends."

"You're super good friends with a hacker who got into the US government computers? He's good enough that this is gonna hold water?"

"He got into the US government computers! You even need to ask how good he is when he faked me a _life_?"

"I don't know that much about computers," Bryce answered on a shrug.

"Well, he's been at it since he was 13 and has only been caught once, across two different countries on two continents. I think that says something about how good he really is. I'd actually appreciate it if you never told anyone else I even told you he's done this. He's not even supposed to own a computer anymore on fear of going back to jail. Some hack he did leaked some top secret military secret and caused them to lose some big contract to a subcontractor."

"Fair enough." Bryce looked at her sitting across from him. In a split second his mind was made up. Her friends were obviously fiercely loyal to her given one of them had executed a crime sure to send him back to jail if he was found out, and in his opinion that generally meant they thought enough of you that you deserved it. "Take me to my brother and I'll talk him into this. Then we'll figure out how we're going to pull it off."

Her head tipped to one side, studying the look on his face. It seemed she found whatever she was looking for there. "Salute," with a shrug, she held what was left of her drink up in mock toast, before draining it in one long drink. A thought occurred to Tempest before she moved to get up out of the booth. "How much trouble are you? There are cops all over the place around Jesse and Vince. Are they going to take one look at you and know we're up to something?"

"Shouldn't do. I've been pretty careful not to get caught. The few convictions I have aren't things every cop in L.A. is just going to know me on sight over."

"Ok. You riding in the truck with me or making your own way?"

"I'll ride with you." Bryce stood and held his hand down to the girl. He was surprised when she took it and accepted his help to stand. He was struck again by how exhausted she looked. "You trust me enough to let me drive? You look like the walking dead." She pulled a face his way, sticking her tongue out childishly.

"I _feel_ like the walking dead." She handed over the keys with a sigh. "I just want this to go away. I want to wake up 4 days ago and head to work, and finish the car I was working on, get assigned to another, and find myself in my Altima at 5 o'clock on the way home like I always do. I want to go home, feed my dog, go for a run, and not think about him again all night until I'm so tired I finally pass out and get some sleep. I want this to all be a bad nightmare."


	12. Falling inside the Black

**Lose The Road**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 11 – **Falling inside the Black**

"_**Your touch used to be so kind. Your touch used to give me life. I've waited all this time. I've wasted so much time." ~Skillet**_

"So, just how bad are things around the hospital? Cops at the doors or what?" Bryce finally broke the silence which had been allowed to reign in the truck since they'd left the parking lot of the bar. He'd silenced the sat-nav, fully able to find St Francis without the mechanical voice telling him where to turn. He hadn't been sure what to say to her. He wasn't sure what was the right answer to give to a woman who'd just admitted she had to _not think_ about your brother on a nightly basis until she passed out from exhaustion.

"Not when I left. There was a cop hanging out somewhere close by their rooms. He just appeared out of nowhere around me a few times, but he's not like sat right at either of their doors. Or wasn't. Now that they know V's awake and talking, who knows?"

"How many floors up are they?" Bryce was starting to try and figure out how they were going to get Vince and a hospital bed down to the ground floor. And then past everyone, all desk staff and security staff, and out a door. It sounded like mission impossible.

"They're on the fourteenth floor. I have no idea how we're going to get him out, unless he recovers enough between now and then to walk down."

"Even then he can't just walk out the front door. Someone might guess it's him. Might be able to give a description of the car. It's not every day someone parks a Cadillac Escalade in the lot at St Francis."

"I told Angelo the damn truck was too conspicuous but he wouldn't listen to me! I told him my car would blend in better but he wouldn't listen."

"Doll, _your_ car was not going to blend in better than this truck. Don't sweat it."

"I don't mean the Skyline. I meant my Altima. It's just a factory colour, nice rims and blacked out windows. It's not that stand out."

"Neither is an Escalade in L.A. in general. But someone they reckon is supposed to be out of commission on the fourteenth floor getting into a tricked out Cadillac Escalade out in the parking lot is." Bryce sighed. This was going to take all the skill he had to pull off.

"So what do you propose we do then? Rent a car and stash the truck somewhere? If we even did that, _if_ he can sit up long enough to come down in a wheelchair instead of flat on his back, I don't think he can sit up in a moving car until we get to the truck." Tempest was starting to panic and he could tell by the tone of her voice.

"I just mean that we can't waltz out the front door with him is all. We're going to have to find a way to go out the back or something. And we're going to have to have the truck parked in a normal parking spot, and somehow get him in it without being noticed."

"Well, first you have to talk him into the idea anyway. He wasn't impressed with the idea in the first place."

"Neither am I really," Bryce answered. "I'm still sat her wondering what's really better. Leave him to do the time, because I'm fairly sure it'll only be about 5 years served and he'll be out before too long. You can come live with me in the mean time and you'll be here when he gets out, can go visit. Or, actually do this thing, and have him live on the run for the rest of his life. Never see him again."

Tempest took pity on Bryce when he reminded her that by helping her, he was also committing to perhaps never see his brother and best friend again. "Maybe the team will come back and it'll get sorted out. Maybe he can come back someday."

Bryce shook his head. "I appreciate you trying to cheer me up Doll, but you and I both know that if he goes with you, if you take off with him, odds are good he can never come back again. Your buddy that set you up to come here is going to have to set him up to go there, and he's going to have a new identity and a new life if this works out. This one won't exist anymore, and really, it might be for the best."

Tempest fell silent again for several minutes. "We can do it the other way, your other way. I'll move here, live with you, wait for him. I never told the boys before but Harry offered me a job, running a shop for him, with excellent pay and everything. If he'll still have me, if he hasn't gone ahead without me, I can set up down here. Take care of Jesse and hope V doesn't actually end up doing 20 years while I grow old waiting for him." She scrubbed a few silent tears off her cheeks. It wasn't the way she wanted it, but it was certainly a lot saner, safer.

Bryce sighed. "He's going with you. I'll work on a way to get him out of this trouble he got himself into while he's gone. If it works out, I'll let you know. Otherwise, there has to be a statute of limitations on what he did. He can come home sooner or later."

Tempest nodded minutely with her head tipped back against the headrest, trying to get her tears under control. "We'll see what he says."

"Doll, if it comes down to it he's going to say he'll go to jail. He's not going to put you in danger over saving himself. I can see him doing just that to almost anyone else, but you," Bryce trailed off. "He's always been different about you. Had this need to keep you away from anything dangerous or shady in the world. He wasn't even all that bothered know that the other girl at the house, Mya?"

"Mia," Tempest corrected

"Yeah, he never seemed to spare a thought for the fact Mia could end up going down with them for whatever charge they could make stick, accessory after the fact or aiding and abetting. Even though he fancied himself in love with her for most of his life. At least most of his life before you came into it. But you," Bryce sighed, "just the mere mention of any trouble you could be in and he went ballistic."

"How would he know that I was in any trouble?"

Bryce smirked at her. "There's more of your family then just you that still speaks to Jesse, Doll."

"And trouble what did my nosey family tell Jesse I was in?"

"Something about street racing. Something minor. But V still hit the roof."

"That little scuffle? He panicked over that?" Tempest grinned evilly. "Damn B, that wasn't ever gonna be no thing. That was only 'cause'a the fact I beat the mayor's kid in that race. I knew that it was gonna disappear. My uncle works for the jail and I'm on a first name, buy you a drink basis with most of the cops in town. I'd have to do something a lot worse than that to end up in any real trouble."

Bryce couldn't help but grin back. "Well still, he went ballistic. There was some talk about a trip up there to eliminate the guy who started those problems for you in the first place, but I talked him outta it in the end."

"Shoulda let him come. At least he might have sorted things with me out then and wouldn't have felt the need to set up this bone head plan instead to try and get me to come down."

"Wish I thought of that." Bryce shook his head. "I only thought of him killing someone and ending up in jail in another country."

"Guess it all would have depended on if he came to speak to me before or after."

Bryce only nodded. He was about to turn off into the hospital parking lot and was starting to feel a bit nervous despite himself about seeing his little brother on machines and all beaten up in a hospital bed. He'd been looking out for Vince for so long, he felt like he'd failed him somehow, even though now they were both adults and if Vince was going to do things like he'd done with his team, there was nothing Bryce could do if he didn't even know. They were adults and they didn't live in each other's back pockets. "I'm gonna have a hard time not ripping him a new one."

"Oh?" Tempest asked in confusion.

"He wasn't even going to tell me himself he was in here was he?" He watched as Tempest bit her bottom lip at his question. The answer was obvious in her eyes anyway. She just didn't want to land Vince in any more hot water. "No, of course he wasn't. I'd have found out from the news paper, or when I went looking for him and found out he was in Los Angeles Prison."

"He didn't want you to end up doing something to help him and ending yourself up in trouble right along with him." She smiled lopsidedly. "Didn't I tell you he was stupid once already today?"

Bryce parked up the truck and just looked at the unconventional woman he was seated beside. She was just so perfectly suited, Bryce couldn't figure out what had taken Vince so long to fix what he'd broken. Why had it come to this? Why had it he let it come to _this_, simply to get this end result? This girl back in his world. He couldn't help himself. He threw an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her softly. "I'm glad you were here to have sense. I needed to know he was in here, and hurt, even if he wouldn't tell me himself. But now I guess you better take me to Stupid."

They got out of the truck. Bryce gave her back her keys and she locked the doors, the truck chirping and flashing the hazards as the security armed. They walked toward the main doors of the hospital and walked in. "I really hope you're right when you say they shouldn't recognise you. If they put you together with me coming in here, they're going to start to question who I am, when I've told them I haven't been around in five years. I shouldn't know people from Vince's 'other' life when I'm supposed to be Jesse's sister he hasn't seen in five years. Even if Nurse Martha figured out I was lying."

"How'd that happen?" Bryce watched as Tempest blushed at his question.

"When I found Vince, he was dying and I just," she paused, trying to put what that sight had done to her into words. There weren't any. "I lost it. My crying woke him up, and he tricked me into the hospital bed with him. I passed out there from exhaustion and I gather Nurse Martha found us like that over the course of the night. She told me she knew that I shouldn't know Vince so well if I hadn't seen Jesse in the last five years. So I had to admit to the fact I visited a few years ago and had a thing with him then. She put it all together, what he did to me then along with his lack of desire to get better now. So she felt bad for him, and us, and she's the only reason why I know how long he has left before they take him to jail."

"Is the nurse going to be a problem?"

Tempest scrunched up her nose as she thought about it. "I don't think so. I had to admit we'd had a fling that ended badly when she questioned how I knew him at all, she questioned why I stayed with him all night when I told her about the break-up, and she was so clearly about to try and protect him. From _me_! So I had to admit the bare bones of what happened, and why I felt how I did about him. That it certainly wasn't him who needed to be protected, least of all from me, or even deserved to be stuck up for in that regard, deserved everything he had coming from _me_. If I was the kind of person to go there while he's flat on his back a few hours off death's doorstep. He deserves all the attitude _I_ want to give him and _then_ some!"

Bryce just looked at her like he had nothing to say. She was feeling a bit lonely and she couldn't shut her mouth as they walked toward the elevators. "I was going to do it you know? I was going to come here, go work for Harry and just try hoping that being around him all the time would wake him up to who was better suited in his life out of Mia and I. And then I found him making out with someone else, some blonde bimbo with no name on the last night he knew we were going to have together and I couldn't do it then. I could overlook all the stuff before if he'd just asked me to, but instead he made out with some whore where he knew I was likely to see them."

"He's an idiot." And the rest wasn't really his story to tell. His brother confided in him, things he wouldn't confide in anyone else because they were brothers, and there was a trust there fundamentally that those things would remain just between the two of them. But this woman was putting her life on the line for his brother. And he was letting her because he thought they both deserved this second chance. But was she going to be open to the possibility of not just loving Vince again, but falling in love with him enough again to give up her life for him as she's been ready to do last time, if she didn't know the whole story?

"He's an idiot who pushed that woman away likely minutes after you caught them. Pushed her away to go find you and give you the choice to stay with him. Realised you deserved a choice to make. Was already planning his phone call to me to tell me he was going away with you for a few weeks to help you arrange your shit if you agreed to try with him." Bryce shook his head. "I know it ain't no excuse for him to be so stupid, and you'd never know it, because he is so confident. But he really didn't think he was good enough for you. He didn't want to drag you further into our world, and you didn't just fit in with the relative safety of the team so if you came into his life, you were going to come into both parts of it. It scared the crap out of him. He thought you were better off over him, so he did what he thought would make sure you left here and got over him. Then he realised that he couldn't even fake interest in that woman if he pretended she was you. That she was all wrong and he was all wrong for thinking it would be that easy. He was going to offer to help you pack, take you the long way back home and show you some sights, and then he was going to find a place for just the two of you, so you could work at _being_ just the two of you. But you didn't oblige him in making a catty scene when you found him and got angry. You just disappeared. And paid cash for where ever you slept it off, he figures, because he went so far as to have our boss run your name for any rooms booked on your credit cards, but there weren't any."

Her bottom lip started to quiver. They could have had a house of their own and a life together for the last two years and it just seemed like his thoughtlessness and the bitch fate was for making her see the stage he'd set had contrived to make sure they didn't get either. "Two bloody years he threw away over some misguided attempt to save me from myself, and his inability to pick up a phone or book a plane ticket."

"But now you get a second chance, in your own world not his. So suck it up. No more waterworks, please."

She laughed at the begging tone in his voice. "I'll do my best. It's been a hell of a two days."

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, squeezed her. "I know. But we're gonna work it out, ok?"

She only nodded, trying to keep her commitment to stop crying, at least for awhile. But Bryce being kind to her was almost more than she could take. This gruff, slightly older version of Vince she had come to care for two years ago and was swiftly being reminded of the reasons why. He'd done his best to push them together back then. He was going to do his best to push them together now, and she was touched by how much he seemed to care. Not just for Vince, but for her as well. And he barely knew her. But he knew her well enough it seemed, and his concern for her wellbeing was almost the undoing of her ability not to break down and cry some more. But she held it together because she also had a feeling like he was depending on her strength to get through this ordeal as well.

They got off the elevator and Bryce fell in step slightly behind her, allowing her to lead the way as she clearly knew where she was going. She stopped in front of a door and went to push it open. He quickly grabbed her wrist. He needed a second to get ready to see his little brother hooked up to things, helpless. "How bad is it?" he asked. His tone was low and he was ashamed that he could hear fear in his own voice.

She looked up at him. She wanted to baby him, cuddle him, but she knew full well he wouldn't appreciate it. So she schooled her face into a mask of calm. "He wasn't on scary machines when I left this morning, just monitors. He's not very mobile because he's been shot in the side and lost a lot of blood, and his arm is heavily bandaged. He was on quite a lot of morphine when I left, so he's kind of spaced out. He was a bit pale, and he can't really sit up. Otherwise it's not as bad as you've built it up to be. I know what I'm talking about, because I had things built up to be so bad with Jesse in my head, the first second I saw him it was actually very anticlimactic in a good way."

"Ok, let's get this over with then."

"Why don't you let me go first, make sure he's alone, and then if he isn't, as few people as possible put you and I together?"

He nodded once sharply to show he understood, and agreed with the suggestion, but didn't appreciate the delay in finally seeing his brother. She knew where he was coming from, but didn't want the big black cop to know about her and Bryce as a pair until the time came he really had to. She stepped into the room, and seconds later was motioning him in. He joined her and found as she'd said it would be, the whole situation was anticlimactic. Vince was sleeping. He looked fairly normal, all things considered. He stood by the door and watched as Tempest crossed the room with a single minded focus on his brother, sat down and picked up his hand after kissing him softly on the forehead. He shook his head. How had his brother let _that_ kind of woman walk away from him? He was giving them this chance together if he had to beat Vince unconscious and carry him down the stairs!

Bryce crossed over to where she sat and stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders protectively. If Vince wasn't still looking like a little boy lost in that hospital bed, he'd be half way toward telling both his brother and the girl it was too late for them because he wanted her for himself. Both of them were stupid, for not doing something about this _thing_ between them before things got this bad. Then his focus returned to Vince. "Is he ok?" he asked on a whisper.

"He's just sleeping I think. Too much morphine in his system for him to stay up for long." She wished he'd wake up too. She was ready to see his eyes again, and know he was lucid. She brushed some of the unruly hair off his forehead again, musing that his hair hadn't aged a day. It was still all over the place, longer than was seemly and shaggy as an ungroomed terrier. And she wouldn't have him any other way. "Should I wake him or do you want to wake til he wakes up on his own?"

"I think we should let him sleep."

Their conversation intruded into his slumber, not that he intended to let them in on the fact he actually had been asleep. Vince cracked his eyes into cautious slits. "I was just resting my eyes." He noted Bryce's hands absently kneading Tempest's shoulders. "Something you two need to tell me?"

Bryce answered before Tempest could figure out what Vince was referring to. "Is there something you should have told me four or five days ago? Or, even better, a year ago when you started to dream up this harebrained scheme? When were you going to tell me what happened?"

"The place is crawling with cops. I don't want you here."

"Tough. You should have told me what you were up to."

"Why, so you could try to talk me out of it?"

"Mostly, yeah."

Tempest broke in. "Do you two want me to go sit with Jess for awhile while you sort this out between the two of you?"

"There's nothing to sort," Vince answered with a scowl. "I told you not to bring him into this," he snapped, his jealousy getting the better of him like it always did when other men touched her. Apparently he wasn't even immune from the feeling if the other man was his own brother and didn't mean anything but comfort by it. Bryce always had had a soft spot for her from day one.

"And I told you that he deserved to know," she snapped back, trying to keep her cool, and a level tone. She knew he was just scared, and really didn't need her snapping at him. "There was no need of you being here all alone all those days. What if I hadn't come down? What if Hector hadn't called me about Jesse?"

"Then you wouldn't be thinking of getting yourself in over your head again with some crazy scheme bound to end you up in trouble."

"Whoa," Bryce interjected, "time out. Tempest was right to call me and I'm glad she was here to be sensible about it. You need family to look out for you when you're laid up in the hospital. The scheme is crazy, but we must be able to find a way to make it work."

"Wait a second," Vince's voice was weaker than his usual growl but held enough menace even still to stop the conversation. "She sold you on this crazy plan?"

"Just barely, but yeah, she did."

"What if I say I won't go? This is crazy. I did the crime, I got caught I'll go to jail. End of."

"No. The rest of them ran off, and you're not going down alone for all of them. You're going to run off too, and we're going to help you do it."

"How on earth do you figure that's gonna happen?" He didn't want to come right out and say it, but Vince knew he wasn't up for anything more energetic than what he was already up to, laying flat on his back.

"I been thinking about it," Bryce answered. "Not totally sure yet." He studied the bed and the man in it closely. "How mobile are you?"

Vince glared back at Bryce, clearly not wanting to answer. "I'm not," he finally growled, giving in.

"Can you sit up?"

"Don't think so." He took it in his head to try, and before anyone could figure out what he was doing, he'd levered himself up 6 inches from the bed. Seconds later he fell back, having blanched and been rendered panting from the pain. "That's a definite no."

"That was stupid!" Tempest admonished. "You're going to rip your stitches and end up in real trouble!"

"Well how in the fuck do you think you're going to pull this off if I can't fucking move?!" Vince growled back. His weakness frustrated him, and pissed him off, and as it only mattered because of her, because she was there and _needing_ him again, it turned into being pissed at her.

"You have another almost two weeks to just _fucking_ lay there and get better first fool!"

"Children!" Bryce broke in. "This isn't helping. Our biggest issue is going to be the fact the heart monitor is going to go crazy when we disconnect him from it. In two weeks time, you'll be due for the stitches to come out anyway, and that means you'll be able to move without ripping them out. Use some sense."

"He's just so infuriating!" Tempest exclaimed at Bryce even as Vince looked at his brother and made a similar comment about the only female in the room.

"And the two of you deserve each other, so get over it."

Tempest took a deep breath, trying to calm down. Both from how frustrated Vince made her with his attitude and his refusal to act like someone as injured as he was, and her sudden panic over what thinking on Bryce hooking them up together again in his head did to her. Look what being with him had done to her last time. Did she want to give him a second chance to do it again? "I'm going to go sit with Jesse for awhile and let you two catch up."

"It's only been a week since we saw each other Doll. We don't have that much catching up to do."

"Well, whatever. I still need a few minutes so I'm going for a walk to see Jesse."

"Fair enough then," Bryce answered, figuring out that she wanted to go toe to toe with Vince but the fact the man in question couldn't even stand up to meet her there had her frustrated. He also had half an idea she was running scared of her feelings for Vince so he figured letting her go get some perspective was best for them all. She left the room quietly and when she was gone, he threw himself down into the chair she'd vacated. "She's still totally head over heels in love with you, you know?"

Vince winced, and not from his pain. "Be kind of unfair if she wasn't."

"Why's that," Bryce asked, feigning confusion.

"Suck if I was the only one," Vince answered with a one shouldered shrug.


	13. You Fight Me

**Lose the Road**

_By – TempestRaces_

**Chapter 12 – You Fight Me**

"_**The only way out is letting your guard down, and never die, forgotten, alone. And forgive me my love, I stand here all alone." ~Breaking Benjamin**_

"So, do you really want to go to jail for anywhere from 5-20 years and find out that she's finally moved on when you get out?" Bryce decided to jab the weapon where it hurt again, still trying to instigate his desired result.

Vince rolled his eyes. "Yeah, it'll be way better for both of us to end up in two different jails in two different countries when this all blows up in all our faces."

"Who says it has to? This guy she knows is some kind of super computer hacker. He's given her an identity down here she's totally confident will hold up under scrutiny. Who's to say he can't do the same for you up there?"

"Like any friend of hers is gonna help me after what I did to her two years ago."

"Her friends all seem loyal to a fault. I don't think very many people deny her things she really wants when they have the ability to give them to her. You know, unless the friend in question is you, and all she wants is an indication it's ok to be in love with you. You found it easy enough to deny her that, the first time around anyway. Why was Dominic worth all this, but she's not worth one more little illegal effort?"

"I'm trying not to die here! Do you have to be so damn cruel?"

"Yeah, I do. Seems to me if you'd done the right thing in the first damn place we wouldn't be here. Her cousin wouldn't be across the hall injured. Your friends wouldn't be on the run from the law. Can't you see that your actions fucked everything up for everyone because you couldn't man up?! If you'd done the right thing right away last time, instead of waiting until desperation set in, none of this would have happened. If you'd gone to find her instead of trying to save her from herself when clearly _she's_ the smarter half of any relationship between her and you, none of this would have been happening. You should have trusted her to make up her own mind in the first place."

Maybe it _was_ cruel and unusual to say such things to Vince when he couldn't get up, and they couldn't go talk it out with their fists in the parking lot the way brothers tended to do when they pissed each other off, but Bryce couldn't get over the _idiocy_. It had to be corrected now, or the whole idea was a waste of time. If Vince didn't get over whatever hang ups he had about himself that had driven him to enact his stupid plan two summers ago, he was going to keep pushing her away and she needed him to let her in, finally. To finally get over the doubts what he had done had raised in her, about herself. She needed him to stop holding her at arm's length until he forgot himself, let her in deeper than he wanted her, and then pushing her violently away when he realised where she was. So Vince had to be ready to be real with her this time. And he also knew that Vince needed her to pick him, want him for just who he was. He knew his brother had hang ups about his worthiness stemming from their childhood, but it was time to put the past in the past. He looked at Vince, saw the stubborn, self righteous look on his face, and realized he wasn't done yet. Vince was somehow still able to rationalize the summer of '99 to himself and that couldn't be allowed to stand. It _wasn't_ rational, what he'd done.

"You know Harry offered her a job? She was going to take it and come live here. Even though you'd never even let on you'd be ok with it, would even want it. Want her here. Even though there was a good chance you'd throw it in her face. That she dared to presume you'd want her around any longer at all in the first place. Was going to get her own place and just—be around. Be around Jesse and Harry's and be normal and let you see what you were missing, get used to the idea on your own terms. She said she could over look all the other stuff that came before, and was going to, but then instead of not even just wanting her too, not even just on that one last night, you apparently just _didn't_, and moreover decided to make out with some nameless whore where you had to be fairly sure she would find you. Which meant you threw away all that other stuff she was planning. And she couldn't forgive _that_, so she ran. And if you're going to treat her like that this time around, I'll phone an anonymous tip about this plan in myself so that you go to jail. You can't do that to her again. She _is_ too good for you, so love her because she wants you anyway." He knew it was finally enough when he made his little brother cry. He'd only seen it happen twice before in 24 years and he knew it meant he'd finally made his point, shitty as he felt about the necessity of it. He patted Vince's shoulder to show there were really no hard feelings, at least on his side.

"She deserves better than what she'll ever get with me."

"But for whatever reason she has, she doesn't want better. You think a woman like that, let alone one who works with nothing but men day in day out, stays single all this time because she can't get a date?"

Vince took a minute to get his emotions in check. It took longer than he would have liked and he blamed it on the drugs, and the fact that all the shit in the last two years, but especially the last few months just—crashed into him. The fact that Letty got hurt, that any of them could have been killed, all tied back to his decisions. The fact his friends were all on the run now was all his fault. He should have told Dominic no. He knew if he had, Dom never could have pulled anything like this off. He might have lost the garage, he might not have all the parts he wanted for all the cars but he'd still be living in his family home—with his family all under the same roof.

He'd said yes out of a purely selfish desire to live his own life on the edge and he had known it wasn't as safe for the rest of the team as he'd told himself time and time again he was making it. He'd been justifying something stupid to himself by lying to himself about how safe he was making it for everyone but him. "I don't think I'll be able to do it. I'll never be well enough to get down the stairs, not even in two weeks time. I'd do anything for her, but I won't be able to do this. Not even for her." He'd wanted the same thing as her two years ago. He'd wanted that apartment, he'd wanted that life where she lived in his bed, his kitchen, in his arms on their couch, and he'd stolen it from both of them it seemed. And he'd give anything to give it back to them both, because he owed her everything he could give and then some, but he couldn't give her this. He was too broken.

"Let me worry about that. You just worry about how you're going to make this worth the risk to her later, after."

"What can I ever do that will make this kind of risk over me worth it to her?"

"Let her in—all the way—for once."

Vince wasn't quite so ready to let that statement stand unchallenged, no matter how much of an ass he knew he'd been. "You know, she was never big on letting me in either. She has more walls than any other person I've ever met and she never took them down for me. Only in her most unguarded moments, and even then it was only a few seconds before she got the walls back up. Everything emotional always had to happen fast an furious, so it could be over. She was always frantic to get the walls back up again."

"Maybe that's how she figured you'd want it. And the way that wouldn't let you see she had feelings for you that you didn't share. You started off your relationship with her as a one night challenge because she was the woman who shouldn't want you, the one that you shouldn't have touched with a barge pole. You think she didn't know that from day one?"

"How would she know that? We never talked about anything like that."

"Vince, everyone _but_ you knew she was in love with you from, oh, at least the night you introduced me to her for me. It was likely the same night I figured out you were falling for her. Everyone _but_ the two of you knew. But again, because she's the smarter half of your duo I gotta figure she figured it out and allowed herself to admit it before you ever did."

"If she was so into me why didn't she start a scene when she found me that night? Why aren't I down a few teeth? She _slaps_ hard enough to split lips, let alone if she ever really clocked me one with a fist. Why did she just walk away without a word?"

"You'd replaced her with a fake titted, fake haired groupie the night before she had to leave. I gotta figure she already wasn't feeling so hot about herself after the way you kept pushing her away, and that that was the last straw. Maybe after that she told herself you weren't worth making a scene over. Why don't you ask her if you want the answers? Do _I_ look like I have tits all of a sudden? How the fuck should I know what was going through her chick brain?"

.

Tempest walked into Jesse's room still absolutely fuming and sat beside his bed. He looked up from the latest issue of the import tuner, which she could only figure some nurse with a mother complex had brought him, because she sure as fuck hadn't.

"Wow, you're fucking _pissed_," he told her incredulously. What had happened to set her off that bad in a _hospital_?

She sat and sputtered for a few seconds, unable to find words. "He is the most frustratingly stupid, slow, dim witted, arrogant, _asshole_ on the face of planet earth!"

"Vince?"

"Who else?" She sat back into her chair forcefully and ended up in an irate sprawl.

"What'd he do this time?"

"He tried to sit up, with a gunshot wound over his oblique abs, like a fucking moron. Jesse, this was such a bad idea. I'm gonna kill him where the trucker failed before we ever reach the boarder anyway." She sighed through her nose, almost a snort.

"I thought you said no." Jesse sat up a little straighter. He'd thought the save Vince plan had been vetoed. She'd never outright said no, but she'd made such a scene and production about the logistics of it all, he'd just figured that was her way of telling him to _grow up_, once again.

"I didn't say yes or no. I said it was crazy and that he was too hurt for it. Then I called Bryce for advice and he wants to help me pull it off." Ironically she started wishing Leon was there.

She couldn't talk to Jesse about what the thoughts of being in close spaces, in close contact with Vince did to her. It would feel like showing weakness and she never showed Jesse weakness if she could help it. And now certainly wasn't the time to start. Leon on the other hand, she could dump all this on and for whatever reason her fucked up brain had, she would feel free to keep it real to him. Much as she knew he wouldn't want to hear it all, had never really gotten over how she kept picking Vince when it was stupid, and she wasn't a stupid person. Couldn't see how someone so _smart_ could keep acting like such an _idiot_. He would listen to her and he would feel free to tell her how it was, in his opinion.

But he wasn't around and he wasn't likely coming back any time soon. So she was stuck with her own council. Unless she wanted to risk a call to Angelo, but he was a bit biased toward her side in almost every matter that concerned her, so he wasn't really going to be the sounding board she wanted. In fact if he knew what she had running through her head he would be quickly trying to talk her out of her plan. And the honest fact was she knew it was stupid, knew she shouldn't have anything to do with it, but she wanted it so bad she wasn't going to do the smart thing and she certainly didn't need someone like Angelo trying to talk her out of it. The level of influence he had over her, he'd likely manage.

"So how are you going to pull it off?" Jesse finally asked when he got over his shock that she was actually entertaining the idea.

"Dunno. Hoping Bryce does."

"Who is that guy anyway?"

"Vince's friend. His partner in doing the kind of things he decided to drag you all into with him. Stupid," she muttered.

"What's stupid?"

"You all doing what you were doing and Vince letting you in the first place. So god damn stupid."

"What'd you know about what Vince does?"

"Damn J, I've always known he was into something, he didn't really make it any kinda secret. He told me he got paid to make people think twice. What else could he have meant? Besides that, he told me he was the one who made it happen, because of people he knew. The night you sent me to check on him, he told me. But I knew before then. I've always known."

"Still dunno how you know the specifics."

She got fed up of his attitude, like she wasn't smart enough, or grown enough to know the truth of the matter. "Because Harry paid me to buy him a truck load of stolen car parts back in the day and it ended up being Vince and Bryce I bought 'em off. That was a pretty big clue right there."

"Excuse me?!"

"Yeah, your reaction's tame as hell compared to what Vince said that night lemme tell ya." Strangely when she remembered that night, the most startlingly clear part was the way his shoulders had felt under her finger tips as he'd lifted her out of the trailer so gently, his hands lingering around her waist.

"I can't believe you! What were you thinking?!" Jesse sputtered.

"The shocked outrage is a bit much don't you think? You've asked me to commit a felony as it is here. I think the risk I'm taking now is worth about 15 years more than the risk I took then. And this time it's because you asked me too, not because I want the money."

"I don't care what's a worse crime. That was way more dangerous."

"I was fine. Harry sent a body guard. I actually wish I could get together with Harry and catch up."

"How'd you know Harry anyway?"

Realising she couldn't really make Jesse aware she could have moved down years ago, she just shrugged in answer. "I'm gonna go out for a bit. I have shit to do. I'll see you later?"

"If you come back. I'm stuck where I am."

"True that. I'll come back. Catch you later."

She left the room and crossed the hall. She leaned into the door of Vince's room, looking at Bryce instead of the man in question. "I'm heading out, got shit to do."

"What could you possibly have to do in Los Angeles?" Vince growled out. His conversation with Bryce hadn't put him in a great frame of mind.

"What I have to do or don't have to do as the case might be is really none of your business. Not anymore."

"Jesus!" Bryce threw up his hands. "Enough." He shot Vince a pointed look and stood. "I'd appreciate a lift back to the bike."

"That's fine, let's go."

"You coming back?" Vince asked as Bryce crossed the room. Bryce figured it was obvious he was talking to the girl so he didn't answer.

"Yeah, later."

Vince just nodded in answer, and with one look at him Tempest knew he was scared and lonely and she knew it was part of what was making him behave so badly. But she wasn't ready to not be angry with him just yet so she backed out of the room and waited for Bryce in the hall. When he joined her she saw his mouth go to open and she held up a hand before he could speak. "Don't. I'm not in the mood yet. Not ready to hear it yet."

"Fine, but we need to talk if you're going to pull this off."

"I'll give you my number, we'll talk. But not now. Not yet. I don't know how to handle this yet."

"Fine." Bryce answered on a sigh.


	14. Absolute

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

_By – TempestRaces_

**Chapter 13 – Absolute**

"_**I've seen this one before, the girl she gets away. Everybody knows it but no one tries to stop it.  
Cause she barely even knows him but if she could see inside, everything is quiet as she waits to tell him who she is."**_

There was a lot he wanted to say to her. Things he needed to say—to explain. But he could see where she was coming from, being overwhelmed. So he'd give her the space she thought she needed. For now. He followed her to the truck and climbed into the driver's seat when she unlocked the doors. She wasn't in a fit state to drive yet, so he'd give her another half hour to get a grip. She gave him a dirty look for his trouble, clearly unwilling to concede the point but cognisant of the fact she couldn't over rule him even if she wanted to. She handed over the key without a word. "What is it you want to do this afternoon?"

"Why? You gonna tell me I don't have shit all to do in L.A. or tell me not to do what I want to too?" She sneered at him expressively, irateness showing as flashes of green fire in her eyes.

"Jesus, chill out! I was just making conversation. And for that matter, Vince is just worried you're going to land yourself in trouble. He's never got anything but your best interests at heart, even when he is heavy handed and clumsy about how he goes about things."

"Yeah, clumsy and heavy handed is right." She sighed. It really wasn't Bryce's fault she was in such a mood. He was only trying to help. "I've got some people to see. I need to know what went down. Why the heat is so hot. You and I might know that he's the instigator, the main force behind this. But the cops should be blaming Dominic and I need to know why they're so interested in where Vince is and not more interested in getting the rest of the idiot squad back from the Federales."

"You figure the rest of them ran to Mexico?"

"They've gone south of the border, that much I'm sure of. Exactly where I don't know. But Letty's got 'Rican on one side and Dominican on the other, and I'm betting she'd know people who could hide them somewhere, if not in Mexico than somewhere down south."

"Who do you figure is going to know for sure?"

"No one. But I want to speak to Hector. I want to know where their cars are. I need to decide what to do with them if they're still around. I need to do something with the garage and the store because they're not just Dom's. I won't let them all screw over Mia. And Jesse might want to open the garage. If they get to come home someday, I don't want it to be to having nothing at all left. Even if it would be because they were stupid."

"You asking a lot of questions about things might attract the heat onto you. People might start wondering who you really are to be asking all those questions in the first place."

"I follow you but they'd have to be tailing me. They're not gonna know who Hector is. Are we being followed? You seem like the kind of guy who'd notice."

He sighed. He hated to give her being right but she was. "I been watching but far as I can tell we're not."

"So we'll drop you at your bike and I won't go back to the fort until I've asked my questions. And after today I'll leave well enough alone just in case they start keeping me under eyes. But today I need some answers. I want to know where Letty and Leon's cars are."

"Why?"

"They were just following the leader. They don't deserve to lose things they can't ever replace."

"What about V?"

"Now Vincent does deserve to lose what he can't replace," she snarled, surprising herself with how angry she still was.

"I think he already has," Bryce answered. Clearly his brother was going to have his work cut out for him paving a way back into this woman's heart. Love him or no, she hated him too, with an intensity that Bryce had rarely seen. She was fucking incensed.

Tempest just gave him an enigmatic look and kept anything else she had to say to herself. They reached the bar and both hopped down out of the truck, which Bryce left idling in park. "You want my number?"

"No, because I don't think your phone getting calls with L.A. area codes is going to help support your alibi if it ever comes down to it."

"It's a throw away cell that Angelo gave me. Not my real phone."

"Okay, give me the number then." She did so and he saved in into his phone book. "When you want me to ring? We're gonna need to sit down and work this stuff out."

"Gimme a day. Let me get my head on straight with Hector and Edwin if need be. Then we'll work it out."

"Ok, I'll ring you tomorrow." Impulsively he hugged her quick and hard before letting her go. "Take care of you. Be careful T. I mean it. You gotta watch your back. Just because we didn't think we were being tailed doesn't mean we weren't. And if we were, now they've put us together with him, and they might start asking questions about who you really are."

"I hear you. But I think my ID will hold up under some scrutiny. And if I know Angelo, he built fail safes into it that will let him know if anyone's looking with too much interest. And if that happens, he's got my number. And likely has the truck bugged up with GPS too. Don't figure he let me come down here not able to keep his eye on me."

"I like the sound of Angelo more and more every time you bring him up in conversation," Bryce answered seriously. She needed a keeper.

"Yeah? Tell it to Jesse, who can't stand the guy even though they never met."

"Why doesn't he like him then?"

"Cause of the same thing that causes all ya'll men to not like each other. Angelo hacks better than Jesse can so he doesn't like him." She laughed softly.

"Like I said, I don't know shit all about computers so I couldn't care less who uses one better'n me."

"That's you."

"Yep, that's me." He shoved her gently toward the truck. "Get the fuck outta here. I'll call you tomorrow. After lunch."

"Better be. I might be sleeping off tonight until then."

"T," he started warningly. The last thing they needed was her making a big deal out of her presence, getting attention they didn't need.

"I know I know! Be careful, keep a low profile, don't go talkin' to strangers. I can drink alone up in the house you know?"

He rolled his eyes and didn't answer, just pointed toward the Escalade. She went, laughing throatily about managing to frustrate the fuck out of him, fully aware she'd managed. He shook his head, smirking. He'd love to know what it was about her that made him like it when she drove him crazy. The fact she was so hot it should be a crime likely didn't hurt, but since he wasn't into her like that, no matter how hot she was, it wasn't likely the answer either.

.

She put the truck in drive and left the lot, programming the sat-nav for El Gato Negro on the fly and hoping Hector was in his club. She didn't want to try and figure out where he was if he wasn't there. It was early in the day for clubs and she didn't know if the Latin man had another day job or not. She was guessing his 'day job' was something he did from the club anyway as she doubted he did very much that was on the up and up.

She parked in the almost empty lot and found the front door unlocked at least. Hector's beloved Civic was present, surrounded by a handful of other tuned and pimped rides. She hoped that either the Latin bartender from the first time had moved on or at least didn't start until much later in the day. The last thing she needed was for him to recognize her. She figured everyone else's paranoia was rubbing off on her now. As many people as that guy saw in the run of a day he was hardly likely to remember one girl from two years ago. Was he?

No one was in the main room when she walked in so she started to wander the perimeter, looking for an office. When she found it, she found Hector, and several other men sat together. She cocked a hip into the door jamb and leaned, waiting to be noticed. They were talking in rapid fire Spanish so she didn't catch much of it, only some of it being similar enough to Italian for her to reason out. One of the posse around Hector noticed her first, gave her a dirty look and made a move to stand up. Following the look his friend was giving someone, Hector turned around. When he saw who it was, he quickly slapped his friend upside the head and admonished him harshly in Spanish. Whatever he'd said to the man had them all quit the room quickly. The man who'd moved to stand up and come her way muttered "lo siento" on his way past.

"Who'd you tell them I was?" she questioned Hector with a smirk. "He sounded awfully worried about his conduct when he said sorry."

Hector grinned. "He's been getting too full of himself for a while chica. I told him you were one of the bosses of the Italian crowd we've just started dealing with. He's scared he just messed up a major deal for us, yo."

She laughed. "Do I even look Italian? You should have told me you were gonna do that. I could have took him down a few pegs in Italian."

"Really?"

"Si. Imbarazzate la vostra sporgenza con le vostre azioni!" She said with her best snarl on her face.

"You're good," Hector. "What did you say?"

"You embarrass your boss with your actions."

"Why'd you ask me if you look Italian when you actually are?"

"I'm not, well, not totally. I've just spend a lot of summers there. Grew up with a friend who's from there."

Hector nodded. "Was wondering if I'd see you."

"Yeah. Likely not the smartest thing I've ever done, coming in here. But I just need to know if you know more than you said on the phone about what went down."

"Not really chica. I heard what I heard second hand from Harry. He was too scared they were bugging his lines in the shop _and_ at home to call you himself so he asked me if I would do it."

"Why would they be bugging the Racer's Edge?"

"Harry was forced into the investigation on the team. They caught him receiving stolen property and used it to force him to let them put one of their undercover guys in the store. Made Harry pretend he'd hired him to work the counter."

"Brian was working at the Racer's Edge? Harry knew he was helping a pig sent in to bring down the team? To send my cousin to _jail_?"

"Harry had no choice." Hector must have seen the anger at Harry on her face for what she perceived as his assistance to the cops getting the team in trouble. "They had him on enough to send him down for 5 years and there was every chance he could take more than just himself down with him. But I guess we should ask my cousin Jorge what you'd know about that, huh?"

She had the good grace to blush when it was pointed out she wasn't innocent of the trouble in which Harry found himself. That she knew he could have implemented Vince, Bryce, Jorge, to say nothing of herself. "So how is Jorge anyway?" she asked with a cheeky smile, recovering herself.

"He's good. How's Jesse?"

"He's gonna be ok. It's gonna take awhile. It's Vince I'm worried about."

"I'm sorry I didn't have the balls to tell you about him but well, I like them attached to my body and everyone around knows enough about what happened two summers ago to find it dangerous to mention him to you and you to him if you catch my drift. Harry wanted me to tell you but I chickened out of it in the end."

"Don't worry. If you'd told me about Vince I'm not sure I would have come down here, and Jesse needed me to come down."

Hector nodded at her honesty. "It's good to see you again girlie, and know someone is here to take care of their shit, but there really isn't much I can tell you."

"You know what happened to their cars?"

"Harry took care of it but he didn't tell me what or how. He said the fewer people who knew, the better."

"I can see where he's coming from but damn. How'm I supposed to go talk to him if he's that paranoid and I really need answers to these questions? I'm here under an alias and the last thing I want to do is blow it and have the bloody cops asking questions about why they think I'm one person but really I'm another."

Hector pointed to her truck on the CCTV monitor on his desk. "Rolling in that? I don't think anyone is going to question why you're at the Edge. If you rolled up in the Skyline you might have problems. That's a ride that people still talk about round here."

She smirked. "Well, can you blame them?"

"That car with you behind the wheel? Hell no. I'm not sure who Harry's more in love with. You or the Skyline." Hector chuckled.

"Not you too. Harry is not in love with me."

Hector turned a bit more serious than he had been. "Well, no he's not. Not in that way. But believe it or not, he does really care about you. He's been worried sick."

"Well, I'll take your word for it and drop in on him then. Get the answers you can't give me."

"Might be for the best."

"Nothing that's happened in the last two years has been for the best." She frowned. _Understatement of the fucking century!_

"Maybe not, but if you want to start sorting it out now, you need to speak to Harry."

"I needed to anyway. I've been wondering why it was you that called not him. Even if Leon couldn't have, I would have expected it to be Harry before you or Edwin."

"Yeah, he wanted to. Go see him. Give the old man a few of the years he lost over this whole cluster fuck back."

"Ok. Thanks for the time. Want me to give your boy another dirty look on the way out?" She grinned.

"Yeah, and call him something rude in Italian too." He watched her leave the room, wondering what she'd do when she locked eyes on his hot headed cousin who'd shown her the attitude in the first place. He stood up and took his turn leaning on the door jamb of his office. Watched as she pointed at the crowd his posse made.

"Tua madre si da per niente! Vada via in culo!"

Hector watched her stalk out like she owned the place after telling his cousin Raul his mother was a whore and he should go fuck himself, trying very hard not to bust up laughing. It was a serious situation, and Raul was hot tempered. That was why he was watching, to step in if his cousin took it in his head to forget his place. But Raul _had_ been forgetting his place a bit lately and Hector knew he'd just used Tempest to help him reassert dominance over his crew. But it was still funny that a female who was mostly hair and attitude had managed it.

When she parked up at the Racer's Edge she took a deep breath trying to prepare to go into the shop and see Harry again. She wasn't even sure he was in, or who would be around. She could be making the biggest mistake of her life going into the place when the cops could still be watching it. She knew they might find it interesting that the sister of the one person on the team not implicated in the heists was visiting with the guy they tried to use to infiltrate the gang but damned if she could help herself. Promise to Bryce to watch her back or no.

She pushed into the store and had to check herself from looking around for Jim. She walked up to the counter, and stood in front of the Asian female using one of the terminals. "Can I help you?" the clerk asked, never looking up from the screen.

"I need to see Harry."

"He's busy," she answered, still without breaking eye contact with the screen.

"How do you know? You haven't even checked."

"He's too busy to come hear you offer yourself to him for sex to get your car built, or get into the import modeling circuit," the girl retorted on a sneer.

"Wow, is that generally what people do to get him to sponsor their cars? Funny, all I had to do was ask real pretty. But since my car's already built, I guess that ain't what I'm after huh?" Tempest pulled the power cord out of the back of the flat screen monitor, effectively eliminating whatever was distracting the other woman on the screen. "Now is he here or not?" She was so mad she didn't even realise how stupid it was to admit Harry had built a car 'she' didn't own until the statement had already left her mouth.

"Hey! You b—."

"Finish that sentence and you'll be looking for a new job," Harry growled as he came out of his office. He walked around the counter and just stood looking at the young woman in front of him. "It's been a long time."

"Too long. Can we go talk somewhere a little more private?"

"Yeah, come through to my office."

Once the door was shut behind them Tempest sighed at her own stupidity. "How many people is that stupid bitch likely to tell that some out of towner came in here looking for you, bragging about having a car you sponsored?" She didn't even know who the girl was to Harry, but she still didn't think twice about her profanity. For reasons she'd always played close to her chest she was sure no matter who the other girl was, she wasn't as important to Harry as Tempest knew she was.

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Bit late to be worrying about it now, though I question why you even are. Is it a secret, your car?"

"It is when I'm pretending to be Jesse's sister from New Mexico, not his Canadian cousin who's Skyline you drooled over two years ago."

Harry cocked his head to the side. "How'd you manage that?"

She waved a hand through the air dismissively. "Long story, not important. How'd you come to have Brian the pig working in the store trying to bring down my cousin?"

Harry sighed, ran a hand through his hair. "You heard about that huh?"

"I've just come from Hector's."

He nodded. "It was that or jail. And jail would have meant a trial. A trial at which details of how I was managing to get the stolen property I was selling would have come out. I might have had to implicate Vince, his friend," he paused. "You. I picked the best of the worst options I had. I never figured Brian for smart enough to figure out what was going on. It took him a long time to do, and he only managed because he really did fall for Mia and really did get close to Dominic. Not the easiest thing to do, as no one should know better than you," he reminded gently.

"Yeah, I'm sure Brian the traitor cop was a real saint," she retorted on a sneer.

Harry shrugged. "He ran and gave up his badge rather than stand his ground and testify. He gave them time to escape. He gave up his career and ended up a fugitive as well to try and keep them out of jail. I'm sorry it didn't work for Jesse and Vince, but Brian was just trying to do his job and the team _were_ doing illegal things. In the end he still let them go."

"I know that Harry, but Jess is my family. He was trying to put my family in jail."

"Yeah kid, it sucks but they did what they did."

"Um," she answered noncommittally, not willing to keep debating the point but not willing to agree with his point either. "So, Hector tells me you took care of the cars."

"Yeah, I had them picked up and stashed. Why?"

"Worried they're safe is all. That and I want V's. And a trailer for it. And some new VIN placards and tags wouldn't go wrong either. It's safe to talk in here, right?" She realized she was a bit late with the question but if it wasn't, at least she could start with damage control.

"Yeah, I had the place swept for bugs after the cops stopped watching me, and the place, for Brian to make contact. Took awhile but they gave up eventually. What do you want with Vince's car?"

"I'm going to kidnap him and I figure eventually he'll want the car back. I'll tow it home with the truck."

Harry's head reared back in shock. "Excuse me? You're going to kidnap him?"

"Yeah, it's that or he goes to jail. Which hardly seems fair when Dom and Leon got to run to some nice warm south of the boarder location."

"Maybe not, but damn. Do you know what you're setting yourself up for if you get caught?"

"Yeah, but I don't have much choice. Two years Harry. I've already been waiting two years for him to fix what he broke. It was supposed to be him who fixed this. We agreed I should wait for him to make the first move, after everything. We agreed it was supposed to be him who fixed it. He broke it!" she roared at Harry, even though she knew it wasn't his fault. But god damn it, it was true. Vince had broken them, and it was supposed to be him who took the first step to fix them. And then when he did she was supposed to get to move here, take Harry's offer. But yet, here she was, being the one to take all the steps, all the risk and make all the concessions. Again. She started to sob again, hating herself for her inability to control herself. But when she and Harry talked about the future, theirs together always started with Vince coming to admit he'd been a moron. And yet, here she was. And yet, he was a moron, he'd just never had to admit it. But he'd left her to chose yet again between her dream job, or him. And it was again her who had to give up something she really wanted over something stupid he'd done.

Harry pulled her into a hug. "How do you think I feel? I've been waiting those two years too you know? Waiting for him to make up with you so I could have my star mechanic and open my garage. Now you're telling me you're going on the run with him and I'll never convince you to come work for me."

The touch of humour was the right way to go and it calmed her into a watery laugh. "Yeah, you definitely have the worst of it in this comedy of errors. You still don't know I'm that good."

"Modest to a fault. You were good enough I would have had a huge fight on my hands with Dominic if I stole you away from him. He was already planning where to put your bay."

"Me, work with Dominic? You must be delirious. Besides that, I never woulda been able to boss him around his own shop the way I woulda ran you around."

"I'd like to argue but I know it's true," Harry agreed with a wry chuckle. He turned serious, held her at arm's length by the tops of her arms so he could look her up and down. "It's good to see you. You look good, all things considered."

"Thanks, I think. I should get back to the hospital. I don't want to leave Jesse alone too long, and I've been gone for hours. Can you hook me up with the car?"

"Yeah. I'll have to take the graphics off it, at a minimum. It's a custom blue. Damn this is a bad idea T. If you get stopped, it's going to be a dead giveaway. New tags and VIN or no."

"Risk I have to take. He won't be fit to live with if he doesn't have the Maxima." She stood up to leave.

"Let me come get you at 7. I'll take you for dinner. You look like you need a meal," Harry offered on impulse. She had to be spending all her time alone or in the hospital. She was going to crack if that carried on.

"How much trouble is you and I together going to cause Harry? How should I even know you if people ask?"

"Same way as you clearly know Vince I suppose."

"Only a few people at the hospital know about that though."

"Well, I'm not under surveillance anymore, and if you're not either, it should be safe enough, yes?"

"I guess." She really wanted his company, she was sure it was a bad idea, but lately she hadn't been acting on too many good ones, so what was one more bad one really? A thought checked her at the door of his office. "How long did you know they were doing what they were doing Harry?" If he'd known all along and hadn't told her, she didn't know how she'd ever forgive him. She wished she had never even thought of it. If he told her he'd known all along, she'd have to start hating him, and she really needed all the people to lean on she could get.

"I didn't know. Not until near the end, when Brian ruled out Tran and Hector. Once he'd ruled out Tran, I sort of knew it had to be them. There was no one left who could pull it off. Hector was always just a red herring. A criminal with a liking for Civics. Tran was a real potential player but when Brian had him busted and it came to nothing, that was when I figured it had to be the team."

She looked at him over her shoulder. Needing him to be being truthful. "You swear to me, on my life, that you didn't know until then? That you didn't keep this from me when I could have done something about it, before now?"

"T, I swear I would have told you. Who do you think has more of my loyalty? You, or Dom Toretto?"

She nodded to show she believed him. "I'm glad I don't have to start hating you Harry."

He chuckled. "Me too T. Go visit your cousin, be ready for 7. He's at St. Francis right?"

"Yeah. See you at 7."


	15. Lost In Time

AN: Its likely mostly just filler, but I'm still trying to get my head around how to do the next part, so it's what wanted to come for now. Sorry, but hopefully you can enjoy the interactions even though not much happens.

**Lose the Road**

_By_ – _TempestRaces_

**Chapter 14 – Lost in Time**

"_**Now I don't know what I'll find. Just want to get in the car and drive. It's time to escape the shade. Been living too long this way."**_

When she got back to the hospital, a force stronger than gravity drew her into Vince's room, not Jesse's. It was Jesse she had come here to be with in the first place. But she could be more honest with herself to Vince. Could just plain be more honest. She wouldn't be trying to put on a facade with him. Wouldn't be faking a superwoman act. She'd asked him who would be strong for her, and he'd taken up the challenge. No matter how hurt he was, he was strong enough to cope with the truth. Jesse wasn't, no matter how much he might try to convince himself otherwise.

She walked into his room and he was awake, lying on his back staring at the ceiling. "Hey," she said softly to announce herself.

He shifted into a sitting position as best he could before he answered her. "Hey." There was a pause while they just stared at each other. "Where you been?" he finally asked.

"Trying to get some things organized."

"What kind of things?"

"Just what's going to happen to the cars, the shop, the store."

"None of that's your problem," Vince answered. It wasn't, but he was touched she cared. And puzzled. What they'd done had put her under unimaginable strain, gotten her cousin shot and put in the hospital, dragged her 24 hours driving straight through the night into god knew what, and she'd spent a day trying to figure out what would happen to _Dom's_ store, _Dom's_ cars, _Dom's_ garage. She shouldn't have cared, and he was more surprised she did than he would have been if she hadn't. "I'd have thought you'd want to see Dominic lose everything."

"Even if I did, what about Letty and Mia and Leon? Besides that, all I sorted out was the cars and I didn't even need to do that anyway. It was already done."

"By who?"

"Harry."

"Why'd Harry have anything to do with this? It was his fault the fuckin pig go so close in the first fuckin place," Vince spat. "If he hadn't given him a cover story, Dom never would have let him get so close."

"Maybe. But Harry either gave Brian the job, or he went on trial for receiving stolen property. And implicated you, Bryce. Me," she reminded. "I was angry when I found out at first as well, but he had no choice. He tried to throw Brian off on tangents as much as he could, but he couldn't tell the cops no when they told him to give the guy a job."

"So you're saying Harry stashed the cars out of guilt because he put Brian into a position to get us in the first place?"

"No, I'm saying he likely did it because he knew I'd want him to," she snapped. Why did every conversation with him turn into a flurry of hurled accusations and defensive jabs?

"What does Harry care what you want?" Vince's eyes narrowed at her as he asked.

"We've kept in touch," she answered evasively.

"Why?" he asked forcefully.

"Because he offered me a job two summers ago, which I was gonna take, but skipped out on, thanks to you. He's been trying to convince me to forget and forsake you for two years and come take it anyway. Jesus Christ Vince, he sent me the architects' plans of the shop he was going to build me!" she roared in his face, totally losing it when confronted with his _attitude_ again. "We would have put Dom out of business. I could have ended up famous in the import circuit with him. And I lost it all because of you! And now I'm losing it all again over you. Because once I pull _this_ off I can never come back again. Don't you get that? Harry's my friend. He's been my friend since two years ago and he's kept tabs on Jess for me. How he didn't manage to catch wind of this until after the shit hit the fan I'll never know."

"Why would a guy like Harry want to be friends with you? You're half his age. What could you possibly have in common?"

She could understand where he was coming from, even if his tone did grate on her nerves. "I don't know," she shook her head and memories made her smile. "We've just always gotten along. Just one of those things. He looks out for me, as best as I'll let him."

"And he didn't try to talk you out of this?"

"No. I said he looks out for me as best as I let him. I'm sure he can spot a losing battle when he sees one."

They spent another moment just looking at each other before he answered. "T, come sit down."

She thought about telling him where to go, making it into a big deal she didn't intend to take his orders, let him boss her around. But in the end she caved to the easy and went and sat on the edge of the bed where he indicated.

"I appreciate what you're trying to do, and where you're coming from. I really do. But even if I am well enough to go from one hospital to another in two weeks, I'm never going to be well enough for what you want to do. And it's too dangerous. Take the job with Harry. If you're free when I get out we'll see."

"You need to get your head around this. I understand. But it will happen. So you do need to resign yourself to it. When the whole thing is sorted out, Harry will still be waiting. He's got his heart set on me," she smiled lopsidedly. "I've been telling him the same thing, move on, pick someone else, it'll be fine, for the last two years but he keeps insisting 'no I'll wait for you, it's you I want, no one else will do,' every time we talk about it."

He couldn't help his grin. She was so arrogant, just like he remembered. "So, you think you could put Dom outta business huh?"

"Well duh! How many men you think gonna pick seeing him hot and sweaty in a shop over me? Harsh reality is more men drive high performance cars than women. Fact of the matter is Dom don't have the right set of tools."

"Letty might," Vince smirked.

Tempest didn't rise to the bait, just smiled in a way that clearly showed she thought there was no contest. "It's Dom's shop," she finally finished, taking the safe road and not putting her thoughts into words.

"There is that," he answered, chuckling along with her.

"Yeah. I should go sit with Jesse for awhile before Harry picks me up."

"Why's Harry picking you up?" The suspicion was back in his voice.

"He's taking me out for a meal." The look on his face made her feel the need to justify this, despite the fact she knew she had no need to justify herself to _him_. "I gotta eat."

"You don't gotta eat with Harry."

"Stop thinking of him as the enemy. He's my friend, who's worried about me."

"I'm glad it's so easy for you to get over Brian's role and how he managed to get close to us in the first place. But from where I lay there ain't nothin' easy 'bout it."

"I'm sorry you think I should be mad at Harry for having no control over what you were doing, instead of you and the rest of them for doing it, and then if you were gonna do it in the first place, for getting caught at it! Harry didn't make Dominic stupid enough to _befriend_ the cop." Tempest rolled her eyes.

Vince sputtered for a moment before he gave up. She was right. Didn't mean he had to tell her she was. He'd tried to tell Dominic the same damn thing enough times. But with Dominic, just like with Tempest, no one told them _anything_ they didn't want to hear. He sighed. "I thought you were going to sit with Jesse."

"I am," she answered as she stood up. "See you tomorrow. I dunno when I'll wake up and Bryce is supposed to call me sometime after lunch."

"Temp," he started, in a warning tone. "Please don't go getting piss loaded. You'll do something stupid."

She sneered evilly his way. "Well, since I'd need a fucking extension ladder to climb to the heights of stupid you fell from, I don't think you have a place to get judgemental from."

"Fine, point taken. Just go do whatever you feel like. Never mind that you're here as someone who don't know me, don't know Bryce, and certainly doesn't fuckin' know Harry."

"I can take care of me, worry about taking care of you," she snarled, internally puzzled at his ability to make her go hot and cold from one sentence to the next. She stormed out of the room and stood in the hall between the two doors, breathing heavily and needing a few minutes to stop shaking in rage. Deep inside she knew that it was The _Rage_ from before, because no matter how ok she was pretending to be with him right now, she was far from okay with him in Reality. Nothing from before had changed. Nothing was settled, nothing was closed. And she was still living in the Place Where She Was _Irate_ with Vince. Just pretending she wasn't livid every second she was around him for the sake of peace, and the sake of keeping Jesse happy. And for the sake of keeping the part of her that was the Still Hopelessly in Love part happy as well.

She rolled her eyes at herself before pushing into Jesse's room.

"You sort anything out today?" he asked her as soon as she was all the way in the door.

She shrugged dismissively. "Maybe. Hard to say. Goin' out with Harry for dinner to try and hash out more of it." She held up a hand to inspire silence when she saw his mouth go to open. "And since I stopped in V's room before I came in here, can you save me any rants or lectures about Harry and how Brian is somehow his fault?"

"Why do you always end up being best friends with inappropriate men?"

Tempest could only laugh at the teasingly rueful tone of Jesse's question, glad he hadn't intended to take her to task over her relationship with Harry after all. "Just lucky I guess." She crossed the room and sat in the chair beside Jesse's bed.

Jesse let them sit in silence for a few minutes before he spoke again, "Brian was an alright guy."

Tempest looked up from the magazine she'd snared off his bed side table at his words. "Oh? Was he?"

"Yeah. He tried to stop me from even racing Tran in the first place. I just didn't listen."

"I see," she answered, unsure what to say. "And why didn't you listen to him then?"

"I just really wanted the other car I guess. Now I don't even have one. Dad's gonna kill me."

"No he isn't. It'll be fine. I'll drive out there and explain it all to him in the next couple days."

"How you going to explain off the fact he says he doesn't have a daughter?"

"Betting that when they tell him a girl named Jessica is claiming to be his daughter and requesting visitation, he goes along with it if for no other reason than to see how it pans out."

"Yeah, sounds like the old man."

"I thought so," she paused, gathering her courage. "So, did Vince hate Brian so much for the reason I think he hated Brian so much?"

Jesse sighed. He thought about trying to play it off like he didn't know what she was asking. Like he could pretend he didn't know she was asking if Vince hated Brian because Brian got Mia's attention. All of it, and _kept_ all of it. "Partly yeah. Mia was his safe bet—his comfort zone—and you were long gone, and not speaking to him."

She lifted her eyes to the ceiling and shook her head minutely from side to side, her mouth pinched in disappointment as she fought tears. "Well, that took all of what, five minutes after I left? After he drove me away?"

"A lot longer than five minutes. It was just familiar for him, and he fell back into it."

"Great."

"You wouldn't even speak to him."

"Yeah, and that was my fault? It was my place to make the first move after what he did? Is that what you're saying? Because Harry, who's a man not a boy by the way, certainly thought it was my place to wait and his place to grovel." She wished she could tell Jesse why Harry had a vested interest in her forgiving Vince and moving to L.A. but she couldn't without hurting his feelings.

"Maybe he would have if he'd thought there was a chance it wouldn't end in you telling him to fuck off anyway. You're not the most forgiving person in the world T."

"He didn't know me well enough to know that Jesse."

"He's not the type to grovel."

"I'm not the type to come begging for more after I've already been beaten black and blue."

"No, I know that. But what was he going to do then? Wait around for something that would never happen?"

"He was supposed to listen to Bryce, who told him several hundred times to get up off his ass, get over himself and come speak to me in person."

"Bryce again? Why's he really care what happens to Vince anyway?"

"They've known each other forever," she answered evasively, knowing that revealing their connection wasn't her place, and that it would hurt Jesse that his idol had kept something so important from them all.

"And you're keeping something from me, but I'm too tired to fight with you about it just yet."

She sighed. He could read her really well, considering they hardly ever saw each other. "It's just that it's not really my business, my situation to discuss, you know?"

"You mean that the other one is V's older brother?"

She looked at Jesse in shock.

"I'm a wiz with computers remember? I made it my business to find out who he was the night he practically kidnapped you out of Dom's. I didn't tell everyone else for the same reason that you weren't going to tell me. He's a scary dude though."

"Maybe sometimes, but never with me."

Jesse nodded to show that was good enough for him. "If you're going to meet Harry at the front door at 7, you better head down soon or you'll be late."

She checked the clock on the wall and found it was in fact five minutes to the hour. "Yeah, you're right. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Ok, see you tomorrow. T?"

Her name phrased as a question checked her at the door and she turned back, "um?"

"Be careful ok? Don't go making a scene or being too obvious. They'll be starting to think about why you're hanging around Vince so much as it is. If they put you together with Harry and having an interest in Vince they're going to dig into who you really are."

"I know. I'll be good. Don't worry so much." She waited for Jesse to nod and then left the room. She paused briefly in front of Vince's door, wondering if she should say good night or just leave and save herself the headache. In the end she wasn't mean enough to leave him wondering alone all night. She opened the door enough to just lean in, figuring it was safer than going in all the way. "I'm heading out," she advised.

He looked her way. "Alright." He shook his head, wondering at his stupidity for going there again. "Please be careful. Spending time with Harry isn't the smartest thing you could be doing in the first place, but if you draw any attention to yourself, it'll have a lot of people asking questions we'd all rather they weren't asking."

"I know. I'll be careful. I can't imagine Harry intends to take me to some red carpet, Michelin starred restaurant that celebrities and paparazzi hang out at."

"I guess not."

"Ok, I'll be around tomorrow at some point."

He nodded and she leaned back out of the room, letting the door close behind her as she turned away and wishing she didn't feel a distance between them, didn't feel like he couldn't be what he was to her then now, and never could be again. On that melancholy thought she headed down the main doors and found Harry waiting for her in a Mercedes SLR convertible she knew must have set him back around half a million.

"Where the fuck do you get off owning half a million bucks worth of convertible? Where did you even get half a mill to drop on a car?"

"Knowing me as you do, do you really think I paid retail? Besides, I have no wife, no kids, thus no drains on my resources. Besides, you don't think The Racer's Edge is the only thing I do for business do you?"

"No, but I don't see you as the kind of guy to spend this much money on a," she shuddered delicately as if the very word was repugnant to her, "_German_ car."

Harry felt the laughter build up and then wash over him, and he laughed until he was almost in tears. "You're such a car racist."

"I am not!"

"Oh really. Then what's wrong with my German car."

"It's not Japanese or Italian."

"What good cars come out of Italy?" he asked with a sneer, purely to wind her up.

"Oh I dunno, just Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, Alfa-Romeo, to name a few."

Harry laughed when he managed to make her indignant on the behalf of a few cars. "You couldn't care less about Ferrari."

She figured out what his plan had been and laughed along with him. "You're right, but I could care even less about Porsche."

On that note Harry put the car in gear and pulled sedately out of the parking lot, heading toward the international airport, if the road signs were to be believed. "Where are we going?" she finally broke down and asked.

"To a nice little restaurant I know. You'll like it."

"Am I going to die of embarrassment that this is only how dressed up I bothered getting?"

Harry eyed her undershirt tank and jeans. "Yes, but the food will be worth it, and because we don't want to draw any attention I've asked for a table in the back anyway. It'll be fine."

"Yeah, only because you're the kind of guy who buys five hundred thousand dollar cars and they'll all assume I'm just the flavour of the week."

Harry's answer was a non-committal noise. She tipped her head back into the headrest and tried to relax, hoping the meal came with enough wine to help her mean it when she tried to relax. She almost managed to turn her brain off until they were parking in the small lot beside a pink stucco building, signed over the door Valentino. She laughed softly. "I should have known when it was you and me and food, it'd be Italian food."

"Yeah, you likely should have figured that one out. We'll blame it on you being tired and hungry. Come on."

She got out of the low slung convertible with some difficulty she blamed of fatigue and followed Harry up to the door. When he pushed it open and they stepped inside, the maitre de greeted them instantly, and as she suspected sneered at her jeans in distaste. But it was clear he knew Harry and that Harry had a table reserved. They were taken through a vast maze of small dining rooms until they reached the smallest, the walls of which were made up of racks upon racks of wine bottles. "Wow," she breathed out. It was all she could say.

"Nice huh? My brother's place." He pulled out a chair. "Sit."

She did as ordered, and simply watched as he ordered a bottle of Podere il Caio and waited while it was opened, and a mouthful was poured for her to taste. "I'm tasting the wine?"

"I'm driving remember? Mostly for you."

She shrugged in answer, smelled the liquid deeply before taking a taste. "It's so good I'd swear you knew I spent most summers between 15 and 19 in Naples even though I don't think I ever told you that," she laughed. The waiter took her comment as invitation to pour.

It was Harry's turn to laugh when she ordered her meal in perfectly accented Italian, and charmed his dragon of a brother into submission with her stories of summers in the Campania region when the older man came over simply to say hello—and likely had intentions of taking her to task for her outfit—and ended up joining them for dolci—dessert and a glass of wine. He couldn't help but be glad the conversation kept her to two bottles of wine and kept her out of negative thoughts. When he checked his watch and saw it was gone 11, and the staff had the restaurant mostly shut down he knew it was time to go.


	16. Let Go

**Lose the Road**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 15 – **Let Go**

"_**Drink up baby doll. Are you in or are you out? Leave your things behind, 'cause it's all going off without you. Excuse me, too busy, you're writing your tragedy. These mishaps, your bubble-wrap, when you've no idea what you're like."**_

"Come on T, it's time to go home."

"Is it?" she asked, clearly unaware of the time.

"Yeah, it's gone 11."

"Aww Harry, that's not late."

"It is to my brother, who's practically ancient by your standards, and is usually on his way home by now, leaving the staff to lock up. And they're almost ready to leave."

"Well, we'll go then, but do we really need to go home?"

"Well, you're not going home, because you're in no shape to drive, but you're coming to my home, and yes, we really need to go there."

"But I'm not ready to call it a night."

"Where exactly do you want to go then? You're supposed to be trying to keep a low profile. Remember?"

"If it was safe enough to come to your brother's restaurant, wouldn't it be safe enough to go to your club?"

"One, I don't do clubs, and two, too likely you'll run into someone who remembers you."

"Harry, it's been two years."

"Still. Too risky. You're you, and thus unforgettable. Home."

"Fine!" she sighed, ignoring his comment about her unforgettableness, thinking he was just being facetious. "Let's go then."

They got in the car and started off. "Harry, how'm I gonna get the truck home?"

"You're not. I'll take you back there tomorrow when you're done sleeping it off. I have several spare rooms. Don't worry about it."

"I don't think that's such a great idea. Just take me back to the hospital. I'll sleep it off there. You and I driving around together isn't smart at all."

"Nothing you've done so far this week has been very smart at all. Where you going to spend the night in the hospital?"

She shrugged one shoulder. "Doesn't matter. I'll find somewhere."

"You sure?"

"Yeah." They fell silent for the better part of 15 minutes as he drove back they way they'd come. "What'm I supposed to do here? How'm I gonna make this happen?"

Harry sighed. "I don't know kid. I don't think you should. I mean, I know you're not gonna listen to me anyway. But I think it's a crazy idea that you should set aside."

"Damn, I know you're right. But I can't. I'm in too deep already. I'm so torn between wanting him in my life so badly I don't know how to let him go, and hating him so much I feel like I can't breathe with the weight of it on my chest. It's like I'm drowning, and the only way I can breathe again is to learn to stop _hating_ him. How'm I supposed to live if I never learn to _breathe_ again? What if I can't breathe without him?"

How could he encourage her to forget Vince and move on after that revelation? There would never be closure for her, she would never go forward, until she either forgave him, or got over him. She'd just spend the rest of her life stagnating in the what if thoughts about what might have happened if they'd worked out their issues. If they got back together. "Since you put it like that, this is what I think. I think you need to be known to have left for home at least a day, if not more, _before_ he goes missing. Otherwise, you're going to just disappear along with him, and they're not going to just let it go. They're going to go looking for you in Santa Fe, and find out you never existed in Santa Fe. Then they're really going to be hot to find out who you actually were. And if they dig T, they're _going_ to find you. They're going to find out that Jesse has a cousin who knew the team and he loved like a sister, and never had a sister to begin with. Then they're going to come for you.

"You need to make a show of getting things in order, of saying good-bye to everyone, pointing out you're on the way home, can't take any more time off. Make it natural, and normal, and cry and be sad and promise to keep in touch and come back soon, make it seem like you're going because you have to, and it's time, not because you've run off into the night. Then you need to let other people deal with getting him to you, somewhere outside the city limits. Someone needs to rent, steal, _make_ an ambulance—but get one from somewhere. Pretend to be the cops sent to move him to the prison hospital. Walk brazenly out the front of the ER and load him up. Drive off. No one will think to find it suspicious until the real cops come looking for him and can't find him. Then they need to meet you somewhere in northern California and switch him over to your truck. And then you need to drive like fucking greased lightning to this friend of yours. And he needs a new identity more water tight than a duck's ass before you go any further than that."

"I'm supposed to just leave Bryce to move him alone?" His words put her deep in thought. She hadn't realized before, but what Harry said was completely true. If she disappeared exactly when Vince did, it was going to arouse suspicion.

"I would suggest that Bryce—whoever he is—will need an accomplice, and the accomplice _isn't_ you. I'm telling you this now T, if you disappear the day he does, without a word, without telling the doctors and nurses that you have to leave Jesse and asking them to make sure he's ok and to keep you updated if anything goes wrong, they're going to catch you before you're half way to Toronto."

"I'll tell him what you said tomorrow when I speak to him and see what he says."

"Ok." Harry pulled up in a dark area beside the hospital, not wanting to pull under the bright lights and likely CCTV monitored awning at the front door. "Off you go."

Tempest looked over at her friend, saw the worry on his face. "I'm gonna be ok Harry. It's going to be fine."

"I sure hope so T. I don't want you in trouble. And I don't want you heartbroken again."

"I won't be. If I think I can pull it off, I'll see you again before I go. If I can't, I won't. Either way, I'll miss you."

"Miss you too kid. Don't do anything stupid. Well, stupider."

She chuckled. "Ok. See you around." She got out of the car before she could talk herself into tears over the last time she'd say good-bye to Harry for a long, long time. Slamming the door, she walked around the nose of the car, and into the lights around the front door. She forced herself not to look back. Not to wave, or do anything on camera that would give away who she came with. She heard the Mercedes start back up and then the door wooshed shut behind her, and Harry was gone from her life again. She rode the elevator up to the 14th floor, snuck through the halls, and didn't even consider Jesse's door before she was opening Vince's.

She paused just inside the door, leaned against it for a split second before he was looking her way, clearly still up, and worried from the look on his face. She walked to the side of the bed before it all crashed into her and a sob caught her by surprise.

"What's wrong?" he asked, trying not to panic. Trying not to panic that he was helpless to go to her, trying not to panic that he didn't know what was wrong, what had happened. "What happened?"

"I'm never going to see him again," she finally managed to get out, around her tears.

Relief floored him that that was all. That she was drunk, and thinking about what she was giving up had her down. He wasn't very good at it, but he could deal with her sad and drunk. He'd done it enough in the past. "Aw baby, you don't know that. Come're." He lifted his good arm up to make room for her and was surprised pleasantly when she just crawled onto the bed and lay her head on his chest without an argument. She seemed to swing between hating everything about him down to the noise he made when he breathed and still being completely into him to the nth degree, and he never knew how she was going to react to anything he said or did until it was over and done. He'd had a fifty fifty shot of her getting into the bed, and telling him to fuck off for thinking she'd ever want to be in close contact with him again. He was glad she'd gone with the option that lacked fighting, because he couldn't handle it.

"Yes I do! In a few weeks I'll never be able to come here again."

He just rubbed her back while she calmed down for a moment, gathering his courage to spit out what he wanted to say. "There is another option you know. The one where you don't do this crazy thing. The one where you go home for a bit, give your notice, pack your stuff, get your car and come back to go work with Harry. The little hard evidence they have on me isn't sending me down for anything near what that cop is saying. He's trying to scare me, and to date he's only managed to scare you."

"You sure? What if he's right and you're wrong?"

"You go after Bryce when you get tired of waiting for me?" Vince offered, trying to make a joke.

"Don't think I haven't considered it, several times," she quipped back. "Who says I'd wait for you anyway?"

"You gonna be like that?"

"You don't know there isn't some hot parts advisor with a fast car and my name all over him back up home anyway. Not like you ever asked, or indicated you cared either way." She had to get the dig in, had to be catty. She didn't know how to _not_. Had to point out he'd done very little to acknowledge his mistake with her. That all he'd admitted was that he should have called. But yet, did still assume that she'd been waiting on him, that there was no one else. He shouldn't be making that assumption with her. She thought she'd be less annoyed if he'd assumed the opposite. Not that she was so into him that she'd been pining and crying into her cornflakes for the last two years. There could be someone else. _Should_ be someone else. So why was he so sure there wasn't that he hadn't even _asked_?

"Better not be anyone with your anything all over him anywhere," he mumbled into her hair.

"Naw, well, not anymore. I left him last month anyways." She yawned, still pissed off he thought she was so pathetic she couldn't have moved on instead of waiting on him. "I intend to sleep here," she announced like a decree.

"What if I don't want to share my bed with you?"

"Then I'll go find some other injured dude that could do with the company and sleep there. I ain't that bothered where I sleep as long as tired, drunk ass driving don't figure in my near future."

He chuckled. "You take all the fun out of everything."

"So I've been told."

"If you're going to go to sleep, shouldn't you at least take your shoes off and get under the blanket?"

"I guess so." She did as he suggested, levering herself up with a sigh, and the minute she was tucked up under the blankets curled into him, she was out like a light.

He couldn't sleep himself, thinking about everything he'd done, and everything that had happened in the last two years. Two years and two weeks, he corrected himself. He'd started the mess then, and was still making it now. Why couldn't he be strong enough to tell her no, that she wasn't doing this crazy thing over him? That she wasn't going to end up going down hard in some stupid Bonnie and Clyde ending over him. That he wasn't worth it. That she needed to go home and find that guy with that fast car and day job. Forget him for real this time. He wanted her too bad to do it, selfish to the end, that was him.

He was still awake two hours later when the nurse came back in to do her checks. Every two hours or so they came to poke and prod him and he'd rather be in jail then dealing with it. He saw her mouth go to open and shushed her, glad it was almost always Martha and not some nosey loud mouth. She held her hand out for his wrist without a word and he accommodated her with a sigh.

"Does she smell of liquor?" Martha asked in shock.

"Likely. She was next thing to drunk when she landed," he whispered back. "She's going through a lot and I'm not much use to her, am I?"

"At least you seem to make a good pillow I suppose," Martha whispered back. "You feeling alright? Pain medication at a reasonable level and everything else we ask you every two hours?"

"I'm fine. Go away."

She nodded. "Try to get so sleep. Don't brood over Miss Thing all night."

"Why's she Miss Thing?"

"Walks around like she owns the place and everyone in it."

Vince laughed, really laughed and took a minute to get himself in check. He hurt his gunshot he laughed so hard. Tempest shifted and frowned in her sleep, swiping at his face in her irritation even though she was still out cold, and he got himself in check as he dodged the slap. "She's always been that way. Can't see it ever changing. She doesn't mean anything by it. Just how she is."

"That's why she's the perfect partner for you I suppose. Obviously the two of you are two halves of the same arrogant person."

"She's just a friend."

"Oh really? Is that why she sleeps there with you like she's done it a million times before?"

"She hasn't slept with me a million times before. She doesn't even like me. Just has a soft spot for lost causes."

"She doesn't look like Saint Jude."

"Huh?"

"Never mind. Obviously you don't get it. Go back to sleep."

"You gonna leave me alone for the rest of the night then?"

"Nope. Back every two hours like clockwork."

"Fucking joy."

When Nurse Martha flipped him off on her way out the door, the amused shock caught him by surprise and he thought he was going to laugh himself into a pulled stitch for sure, but then Tempest's second slap of the night was more on target, and he settled down to watch her, rubbing his stinging cheek but still chucking to himself, that she could slap that hard in her _sleep_.


	17. Here I Go Again

AN: This chapter has smut. Being forwarded is being forearmed. If you're going to bitch and moan don't bother. Not interested, don't care. You might as well hit back now and save your time typing out any kind of complaint, rant, flame, whatever because you'll be ignored, and even better, if you're anon, you'll be deleted. If you're too young to get it or too prudish not to get your panties in a twist over it, don't read it. Consider that my first and only statement on the issue. Capiche? On another note, if the story continues to get 300+ hits a chapter and one review from my husband I'mma stop posting it. I'm at work most of my life, if I want to tell my husband a story, I don't need to waste my time typing it up and posting it on the internet. Rather than saying nothing, say it sucked if you know why you think it did, say hello, say it's ok, say whatever, but indifference means no more wasting my time. That's the last time I'll say it and as melodramatic as it'll get because I'm serious this time. Ciao.

**Lose The Road**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 16 – **Here I go Again**

"_**Still remember how you make me weak. How I fought to find the words to speak.**_

_**I just can't escape the memories. I tried but I just can't break free.**_

_**Thought I closed the door on what we had. But these feelings just keep coming back.**_

_**Didn't think that you could make me lose control like that."**_

When he woke up she was gone, but he wasn't surprised. When she depended on him for anything she got embarrassed about it, and uncomfortable. So because she'd chosen to share her breakdown with him, and then let him comfort her all night, she'd managed to sneak off before they might possibly have to talk about it in the cold light of sober day. Why she figured he'd want to talk about her feelings or his for that matter, he didn't know. Surely she should know better by now. Know he'd be just as willing to pretend it hadn't even happened as she was.

He did want to get up, move around, find something more productive to do than lying flat on his back, but his options were limited in that regard. He found himself hoping she came back, or at least Bryce took it in his head to visit again, anything to break the monotony. But he wouldn't ask either of them to, because that would be like admitting his weakness to them that he needed company in the first place. He sighed. The sooner this limbo was over the better. Being on the run or being in jail would surely be better than this solitary confinement.

When Tempest woke up she slipped out from under Vince's limp arm and quietly left the room, feeling like a thief in the night. She felt guilty for being willing to accept his company and comfort in the dark and then stealing off before he could wake up, and she might have to face some of the feelings she was warring with if he wanted to talk about how she could be so cold to him in one moment and be crawling into his bed the next. And she couldn't talk about it with him yet. Wasn't ready to talk about how much she hated herself for the very real desire to forget what he'd done, and how hurt he was, and just jump him in his hospital bed. How part of her hostility toward him was caused by the fact she had an almost overwhelming need to crush her lips to his every second of every minute she was looking at him. And the fact he didn't seem to feel the same. Didn't seem half so affected by her as she did by him.

She pushed into Jesse's room with a sigh. She felt like she lived in the hospital. All she did was migrate from one room to the other. Vince's because she didn't yet know how to breathe without him and Jesse's because he was still Vince and thus still drove her so angry she wanted to choke the life out of him every second time he opened his mouth and she had to escape before she killed him for the sin of breathing, or blinking, or letting his fingernails grow.

"Aren't those the clothes you had on yesterday?" Jesse asked with an eyebrow raised.

"Yeah, guess they are," she answered before sitting on the edge of his bed and helping herself to a piece of toast off his breakfast tray. "How do these people manage to fuck up _toast_?" She scowled. Hospital food was _gross_.

"You're in a perpetual bad mood lately. What's wrong now? And why are you still in yesterday's clothes?"

"I'm in a perpetual bad mood lately because you're hurt and I'm hung over."

"Bullshit. Don't bother telling me anything if you're going to tell me lies." Jesse could only blame how frustrating it was to be stuck in a bed that wasn't his with nothing to do and no one to talk to when she was wasn't with him for how he talked to her. But he couldn't take her coddling him, placating him, protecting him from the truth anymore.

"I'm in a perpetual bad mood because," she paused, blew some hair off her forehead while she gathered her thoughts. "Because I'm still in love with him, and I don't like being the stupid one so I'm perpetually angry with myself and it comes off like perpetually angry with the world. I'm still in yesterday's clothes because I got piss loaded out with Harry last night, couldn't drive home, and chose instead to have a drunken break down in front of Vince, and then spend the night in his hospital bed with him, before creeping out just now before he could wake up and want to talk about, well, anything. Because I can't face _anything_ between us yet. So I ran. And here I am." She shrugged.

Jesse sighed forcefully. The fact she felt she had to face Vince at all was all his fault. He'd pushed her into seeing Vince again, and into feeling like she had no choice but spend the foreseeable future living with him too. "I know I made you feel like you didn't have a choice, but really, if you can't live with him again T, I'll understand if you back out of this. It's crazy, and if that's how you really feel about him, how you gonna live with him day in day out for years?"

Tempest sighed, before leaning in and kissing Jesse on the cheek to thank him for his understanding. "I need to have time to learn to like him again Jesse. I need to learn to breathe again, and if he goes to jail and I never see him again, I'm never going to learn to breathe again. If I didn't actually want to do it, I would have shot you down in the first place. Not let it go so far. Not let V get his hopes up. Not got Bryce involved. Harry had some good ideas for me." She shook her head, rolling her eyes up to the ceiling in a move Jesse recognized as one she did when she was fighting to keep her composure. "It was just that Harry helping me plan this thing made me realize that Harry was helping me plan to never see him again and it got to me. I really like Harry."

"Why do you really like Harry? I mean, I know he's your friend, but how'd you get to know him that well anyway?"

Tempest looked at Jesse and she didn't know what to say. She couldn't fill him in without telling him about Harry's offer. And he'd already proven once today he didn't want to be lied to or patronized. But it was going to be hard for him to swallow. "Hard truth?"

"Please."

"He offered me a really peachy job when I visited. When Vince happened. I was thinking about taking it. Trying to decide if I had the courage, had the balls to move to L.A. without an offer or request from him to come make a go of it. Just be around and normal and hang with you and just _be there_. I'd decided I did. I was going to do it. But before I could tell any of you, least of all you or V, he did what he did and then I just couldn't J. I never told you because you would have been crushed and pissed at me and Vince. At first I was still thinking about if I could do it, give up my life to come be here hoping on him and face the fact that he might never come around. But when he did what he did it was like he threw all my plans and dreams into the dirt and ground them into it with his heel while he laughed. I couldn't do it then, not even for you, so I never told you. But Harry's kept in touch, trying to talk me around. But I couldn't be in the same state as Vince without committing murder, never got over what he did enough, so he was still talking and I was still digging my heels in."

Jesse nodded like he understood. "I don't know what to say to you right now."

"How so?" A frown wrinkled her brow. How had she been unclear?

"I just feel like that means I wasn't worth enough to you for you to get over some two week relationship that never went anywhere."

"Jess, it wasn't like that!"

"I know, but it feels like it to me right now. Can you go away and leave me alone for a while? I need time to think on my own." Jesse watched as she got up and rushed the door, but not fast enough for him to miss the tear on her cheek. "T, come back I didn't mean it!" he called after her, but she still pushed the door open and ran through it, not letting on she'd heard him. "Fuck!" he roared.

He'd asked her to stop protecting him, treating him like a boy not a man, and then rather than act like a man, he'd acted like that spoiled child and driven her off. He knew that she didn't let people in often, but that she'd let Vince in and that his violation of that trust had crushed her. Crushed her ability to trust people, and then he'd tossed that in her face like it should have been nothing she just let go to give him what he wanted. He'd shown no regard for what she'd wanted back then. What she could have had. What they all could have had. She wasn't the villain, she'd done nothing wrong. She'd been a 19 year old kid ready to give up her family and friends over something she thought she had. She hadn't been the wrong one, Vince had, so where he got off blaming poor T he didn't know. But he cursed the fates for having him bed bound and unable to go plant the fist in Vince's face he should have put there two years ago. He picked up his phone and rang the number she'd given him for her while she _wasn't_, but she didn't answer.

Tempest stopped running a few paces down the hall and stood with her hands clenched into fists at her sides with tears streaming down her cheeks. She was crushed by Jesse banishing her from his room, not even trying to understand where she was coming from. She wanted to run to Vince, wanted him to want to comfort her because he was the one she'd picked to be strong for her when she couldn't be. But she hated herself for that feeling as well, because she wasn't sure she should stop hating him long enough for him to manage. Then she started thinking about how she was only in the position of admitting to Jesse she'd turned down a job in L.A. because Vince had ruined it all for her. And she was so angry at herself for still loving him and so angry at him that he didn't love her back, that she stormed into his room full of rage.

She pushed the door open violently and strode in.

"T, what's wrong?" he questioned, as agitated by her tears now as he was the night previous, but hoping for something so easily put aside as it was last evening. But her anger didn't jibe.

"You ruin everything!" she yelled in his face.

"Generally yeah, I'd have to give you that one. But since I been laid up in here for the last week or so, how'd I manage to ruin anything lately?"

"Because of you I couldn't come move here. And I just had to admit to Jesse that I had the chance and had to turn it down over you and now he's mad at me for picking being angry at you over him! And if you hadn't been such a fucking idiot who decided I wasn't woman enough to make up my own mind what I wanted in the first place I would have done it, taken Harry's job, and at least in this shit storm one thing that wouldn't be going wrong wouldn't be that Jesse is angry at me!" She got in his face with her rant, practically roaring in his face, hers screwed up in absolute rage.

"I told you I shoulda called. Why are you still so fucking angry at me?" Vince roared back. What more did she want?

"Because what kind of admission is 'I shoulda called' after what you did? And because of this!" She roared back, still right up in his face, before taking hold of his hair with two fists and crushing her mouth to his.

He couldn't think fast enough to kiss her back, the shock of what she'd done rendering him frozen in time. He'd figured she didn't want anything to do with him along those lines anymore.

"Because I still want that as much as I ever did, despite everything, and clearly you don't!"

Before she could move away, or even think about what came next, he tangled his one good hand into the hair on the back of her head and pulled her back down the few inches needed to allow him to crush their lips back together. He noted that she had the same moment of brain freeze he had, where she just let him, staring him in the eyes with shocked surprise, but he didn't let her move away and a second later he was glad he hadn't when she finally gave in and kissed him back, her eyes sliding closed as her fists again tightened in his hair. How could she think he didn't still want her with something that _burned_ every second of every day? After the way he'd kissed her that first night? After he'd admitted he'd been in love with her.

He tugged on her scalp with his fist in her hair, never letting her move away from him, but encouraging her to straddle his hips down low enough that she would be sat where he wanted her and low enough she wouldn't be on top of his wound. She climbed up, eyes closed, hands in his hair and once she was settled, he used the grip in her hair to tip her head to the side and bit her on the neck hard enough he was sure it was going to mark her skin. She only whimpered breathlessly and he licked back up her neck to her earlobe which he nibbled on before sucking it into his mouth, feeling himself growing hard where he was pressed between her spread thighs. A fact she clearly hadn't missed as she sat down harder, gyrating her hips gently and allowing him to drag her mouth back to his with a throaty moan.

Her hands left the hold in his hair, moving down to unsnap the snaps holding his gown up on the shoulders, pushing it down around his waist without ever opening her eyes, her hands tripping over his chest, reacquainting themselves with his skin. He cursed his lack of a second hand, the other one still swathed in gauze bandages and loaded with IV lines. He wanted one to hold her down tighter against his hips and one to slide up her shirt. He decided compromise was in order and left her to make up her own mind how hard she wanted to grind on him while he slid his good hand up her shirt and pulled her bra cup down enough to cup her breast with his palm.

She released his mouth and arched her back into his touch, her head thrown back with a moan. He grabbed the hem of her tank, starting to pull it up her torso, glad when she pulled it off when he'd pulled it as close to off of her as he could with one arm. He splayed his palm on her back between her shoulder blades, pulled her chest toward his mouth, wrapped his tongue around her nipple and sucked hard. She whimpered again, the circular motion of her hips grinding on him increased in tempo. He tangled his hand in her hair again, bringing her mouth back to his so he could hungrily mesh is tongue with hers.

He wanted her out of her jeans. He wanted to be inside her. Now. Before there were stains on his hospital gown he didn't want to be explaining to nurse Martha. He was contemplating if he could get the button at the waist of her jeans undone one handed when a throat was cleared at the door.

"Guess this is a bad time?" Bryce asked on a chuckle. About time they stopped dancing around what was obvious.

"You think?" Vince growled back.

"Well, yeah, but I don't know what you thought you were gonna do in a hospital room with no lock on the door in the middle of the morning anyway."

"I don't either," Vince answered, obviously still irate. His inability to finish what he'd helped to start went far beyond that, but _that_ didn't bare thinking about. "But whatever it was, it didn't involve you watching to get your jollies." Vince knew this was an argument he was going to be having with his brother on his own, because Tempest had already buried her no doubt bright red face into the crook of his neck where it was also pointed away from Bryce in her embarrassment.

"I just go here. And besides that, what if I'd been that cop that's hanging around? I thought the only one who was supposed to know all about you two was the nurse who figured it out on her own?"

Vince sighed. Bryce was right. Didn't mean he had to like it. Didn't Bryce know how long it'd been since he'd been with any woman? Let alone the _right_ one. "Yeah, but couldn't you have just backed out and let us have another 10 minutes?"

"You're optimistic today. You think you could have used a whole further 10 minutes?"

"Very funny. You want to give poor T a few minutes of privacy to get over the weirdness of you seeing her with no shirt on here?"

"I suppose. I'll be in the hall. Find a way to send the all clear when you've sorted yourselves out and I don't have to be further traumatized by either of you without your clothes on." Bryce backed out and let the door shut behind him.

"I guess this is going to be another one of those moments you find it too awkward to deal with, huh?" Vince asked with a chuckle.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Tempest asked snottily, choosing to ignore his correctness, proven by the fact she'd yet to unbury her face from his neck.

"When recalling one of the best afternoons I ever spent in my car, an afternoon with some parallels to this morning actually, one of the things I clearly remember is how long it took me to convince you to get over being embarrassed enough to put your clothes back on."

"Yeah, well, at least you finished what you started back then."

"Baby, give me a few weeks to be out of this bed and not flat on my back and I'll have no problem finishing what I just started with you. Over and over again."

"Yeah well after everything, this was a moment of insanity on my part so don't count on it."

"We'll see."


	18. Walk Away

Sorry it's been so long, and this is likely a bit boring but I'm finding it hard to get to the next part because I'm struggling to wrap my head around how I'm going to do it. But I promise I'll finish setting it all up very soon and get the next sort of 'main' part of the story underway. I can't promise how long it will take however. Onward.

**Lose the Road**

By - _TempestRaces_

Chapter 17 – **Walk Away**

"_**I don't know why she's with me. I only brought her trouble since the day she met me. If I was her, by now I would have left me. I would have walked away.**_

But you've fallen in love in the worst way. And if you don't go now then you'll stay. Cause I'll never let you leave, never let you breathe. Cause if you're looking for heaven, baby it sure as hell ain't me."

Bryce gave up waiting to be invited back into the room after about ten minutes. He figured they weren't going to tell him they were decent out of spite for his interrupting, so he just walked right back in. He found he was correct in his assumption. They were both decently clothed again, she in a chair and he in his bed, both pretending the other didn't exist. He sighed. Back to the dance of mock indifference. _Great_.

"You two gonna be mad at me for something that ain't my fault all day, or just for a while?"

"I'm not mad at you," Tempest snarled with a sneer on her face, tone totally saying she was oh so mad at Bryce even if her words denied it. And potentially with Vince as well. But mostly with herself, he was sure. And thus the overreaction level of anger.

"No, you're growling at me because you're the very spirit of good humour." Bryce answered on a sigh. Just because he understood where she was coming from didn't mean he had to be happy about being subjected to it.

"No, I'm stressed to the fucking limit. And it feels like I'm constantly wasting time putting out fires and dancing around hurt feelings and little boy attitudes rather than doing something constructive and getting everyone out of this mess."

"No one asked you to get anyone out of any mess," Vince snarled, choosing to take her comments personally, not attributing any of it to Jesse, as he likely should have done.

"No, but you got them all into the mess over your inability to pick up a phone in the first fucking place, so let's not get all self-righteous."

"People!" Bryce broke them up, and found he was getting fed up of the necessity. "You," he pointed at Tempest, "go sit with Jesse." He turned to Vince. "You, lay there and try not to piss anyone off for 5 minutes."

"I'm not interested in sitting with Jesse. Jesse can lay there and worry about whether I'm going to be ready to make up with him any time soon. Jesse, much as I love him, can go fuck himself along with the both of you." She stood up abruptly. "I'm taking my truck and going to have a proper meal because if my blood sugar stays this unbalanced I'm going to kill one, both or all three of you. Then I'm going for a run to burn off some of my energy and stress. And then I'm going to shower and change. Then I may see one or all three of you here again, after I find my ability not to punch one or all of you in the face." She left the room without saying another word to either of them.

"What the hell did you do to her?" Bryce asked Vince as he stared after Tempest's retreating form, puzzled by the fact her attitude amused him. The typical person who spoke to him the way she just had would have been slapped down a few. But when it was her, it was just so much a part of her he couldn't hold it against her.

"What haven't I done to her? I think most of this has nothing to do with now and everything to do with then and I don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to do about it. What's done is done."

"You said sorry yet?"

"Yeah," Vince gave Bryce a look like he was a moron. "Of course I have."

"Really? Like you meant it, like you acknowledged how stupid you were back then?"

"I told her I shoulda called. What else is there to say?"

"How about 'I shouldn't have done that in the first place?' How about 'I only did it because I was terrified of the things I found myself wanting and I didn't know what to do with it, so I fucked up and I wish I could take it back'? How about any of that?" Bryce snorted in disbelief. "What kind of apology is 'I should have called'?"

"Jesus, that's what she just asked. You two co-ordinate that shit telepathically or what?"

"No, just both smarter'n you I guess." Bryce sat in the chair Tempest had left empty. "You're gonna have to do better'n that."

"I know, but I'm not in the right frame of mind for it, or the right place, stuck in here."

"Yeah, well, getting physical with her before you make up with her proper ain't right. She's gonna think that's all your after again, after that's what you made her think last time."

"Damn B, she started what you walked in on, not me."

Bryce tipped his head to the side in contemplation. "I see." He wasn't sure what to make of that. He just sat with Vince in silence for another couple minutes before he spoke again. "I gotta go for a while. You alright if I do? Need anything?"

"Naw, I'm fine. They'll be bringing lunch soon, such as it is."

"Alright. I'll be back, hopefully at the same time as the wild thing, so we can work some of this out." Bryce left the room with that and Vince huffed a deep breath, trying to use the solitude to get his head around his still fucked up life.

Tempest went back to the house, changed into the only thing she had brought with her passing for athletic wear, and after shoving the earbuds of her Ipod into her ears, took off out the house at a moderate pace tuned into a running mix. She ran until she could barely breathe, and her legs could barely hold her, and then she went back to the house. She showered upstairs, unable to find any motivation to clean the bathroom in the basement and god knew it would need cleaning before anyone but the guys would see fit to use it.

She then dressed in some low rise flairs and a babydoll tee shirt before pulling a light leather motorcycle style jacket on over and some chunky New Rock boots on her feet before going out and getting into the truck. She felt like she spent more time living in a truck or hospital than she did in a house lately. She scorned all the fast food she passed, and pulled into a place where she could get something that wasn't served with a side of fries. After she ate she drove around aimlessly until she felt more even and headed back to the hospital. She then found herself stood between door a and b, unable to decide who she wanted to deal with first, Jesse or Vince.

She eventually decided on Jesse and entered the room. She cut him off before he could open his mouth. "I'm not ready to make nice. But I will be. Just not right now. Not yet."

"Okay," he answered. It was more than he'd hoped for, quicker than he'd hoped for it. He hadn't really been expecting to see her again anytime soon. "You okay? You don't look good."

"I'm exhausted," she answered, forgetting she was supposed to still be angry with him. "I ran til I almost passed out this afternoon to try and just de-stress and I'm still just wrecked. Maybe that means I'll sleep tonight I guess."

"Why'd you come back here then? You shoulda just stayed at home, taken a break." She shrugged.

"Yeah but I told Bryce I'd be back later after I got chill enough not to beat one or all of you. I dunno about chill enough but I got exhausted enough that I don't got energy for ass whoopins so I guess it'll have to do." She yawned tiredly. "If this is gonna happen, I might have to leave soon. Harry made a valid point. I can't just disappear on the same day as him or they're going to be straight after me. They won't let it go as a co-incidence. I have to go a few days before. A week of the two the nurse said she could keep him here is over. In four or five days, I gotta head out."

"It's a valid point," Jesse couldn't argue but he wanted to. He didn't want her to go while he was still stuck in the hospital. No one had given him any idea when he could go home. "You been to see my dad yet?"

"Nope. Still trying to figure if it's worth the risk of him saying he hasn't got a daughter. Maybe tomorrow. See how it goes."

"Hey!" Jesse showed some enthusiasm and sat up straighter. "What if I call him? Tell him I had an accident and make like you and he might have had a big fight? Be like 'Jessica wants to come see you about what I'm gonna need when I get out of the hospital but she's scared you won't see her after all this time, but she _is_ your daughter dad?' then he'll know to go along with it, but if they're listening to his conversations, there won't be anything suspicious for them to latch onto?"

"Worth a shot I guess," Tempest answered. "Give it a try."

Jesse made the call, and it went well. After he replaced the receiver he turned back to Tempest. "He'll see you tomorrow. No sweat."

"Good. I better go say night to Vince and B if he's around, and then go home and get some sleep."

"Ok, see you tomorrow."

"Yeah, see you tomorrow." When Tempest looked at Jesse she could tell he was worried she was still mad at him, so she leaned down and kissed his forehead before heading for the door. She was mad, but not so mad she'd leave him worrying all night. He was in enough stress without her adding to it by leaving him thinking she was going to be pissy with him for the foreseeable.

She crossed the hall, pushed through the door, and took a moment to just take in his face before she took in Bryce sitting in the chair beside the bed.

"You look like shit," Bryce said as soon as he got a good look at her face. He rushed to correct himself, seeing the storm clouds brewing in her eyes and knowing he was soon going to be in for a set down. "I mean, you look hot as fuck, but tired as shit." He caught the look Vince was giving him that said if his brother wasn't too hurt to get out of bed, they'd be speaking with their fists. "What? She does! Like she belongs on the back of a Harley. I'm not supposed to notice? I ain't dead."

"She ain't hot to you. She's off limits to you. And she ain't never riding on the back of your bike again. Or any bike for that matter," Vince growled.

"_She_ is stood right here, _knows_ she looks like shit, has _no_ desire to ride on _anyone's_ motorcycle, and _doesn't_ appreciate being talked about like a slab of fillet mignon."

"I didn't mean you look like shit. I meant you look tired. Very tired. Where you been?"

"Like I said when I left, I had to get a meal before I killed someone and cafeteria or fast food wasn't going to cut it. First I ran until the exact moment I almost passed out, and then I had a shower, then I had a meal, and now here I am. Too tired to try and punch any of you in the face, luckily for you both."

"Why didn't you stay home and go to bed then?"

"There are things we need to decide, and we're running out of time to decide them. We need to sit down and start to talk about it sometime," Tempest addressed Vince's question as she walked toward the other chair in the room. "If I have to go a few days before you disappear we're running out of days. A week is gone."

"Hold up. You have to be gone before he disappears?" Bryce questioned. "Why the fuck is that?"

"Think about it B. If he and I go missing on the same day, and Jesse is still in here, they're going to be on me like white on rice from day one. If I disappear the same day as he does, they're going to really dig into who I am and what I was doing here, and if they dig hard enough they're going to find mentions of Tempest, and find no mention of Jessica before a week ago. At the very least they're going to be interested enough to find out where Tempest and Jessica live, and make some phone calls. And while the line for Jessica will forward to my cell, I don't know if they can detect it when a call forwards, and no one is answering Tempest's calls. Worst come to worst, Angelo will cover for me, and fake evidence I was there with him like I told the people at home I would be. But it'd be better if Jessica just made arrangements for Jesse and told everyone she had to go home for a while to handle her business."

"When'd you decide that?" Bryce asked, looking at her speculatively. She was completely right.

"I didn't. Harry did." Bryce cocked his head to the side with her answer.

"Shouldn't he want you to fail, or at least decide not to do this? Why's he helping you do this better?"

"He's my friend." Tempest shrugged. "He wants me to be happy. He wants me to have what I want. He doesn't want to make my decisions for me. Likely decided long ago that he couldn't anyway and might as well not waste his energy."

"Meow," Vince drawled, finally opening his mouth. "Retract the claws, Trouble. Point scored." Tempest just cocked an eyebrow his way before continuing, choosing not to dignify his assumption with acknowledgement.

"He also said we'd likely be best off getting an ambulance from somewhere and using that to move him in, so it looks legit. I'd like to go one step further and get the people who actually move him to dress like cops and act like they've come to do the transfer, have some official looking paperwork and that stuff. Make it look like the prison has come for him, so it'll take longer before anyone questions it. Hopefully long enough for the ambulance to meet me and do the swap off into the back of the truck. Plus, the stretcher out the ambulance would likely be the best thing to leave him on in the back of the truck."

"Now who's talking about who like a slab of meat?" Vince interjected.

"In this, you _are_ just a slab of meat," Tempest snapped back. "So lay there like a good steak and be quiet." Bryce stood up, ending their bickering.

"Well, I have an ambulance to find. So I'll go work on that while the two of you bicker because I've had about enough of it today. See you both in the morning. I'll let you know how I've made out then." He turned to Tempest. "You should go home and sleep in a real bed tonight. You're getting bitchy and you're not really the bitchy sort. You need sleep. Go get some. There will come a day that I stop putting up with your attitude and start telling it like it is."

Tempest only rolled her eyes in answer and Bryce left with a sigh. She wasn't about to get into a fight with Bryce about telling her what to do. She wasn't about to explain to him in front of Vince that her stress level and thus her level of mouthing off had nothing to do with lack of sleep and everything to do with being unable to make up her mind if she wanted to kiss or kill Vince every time they were in the same room together.

"You should likely go home, get some sleep," Vince repeated once the door was shut behind Bryce.

"I know. But driving back to the house means driving the truck again today. I can't wait to give the damn truck back. I've seen well too much of the inside of it over the last week. I didn't want the truck. Angelo wanted the truck. I pimped it as best as I could, but there's only so much you can do to an Escalade and it was always for him, I never wanted it, tried to talk him out of buying it in the first place. It's just so fucking huge, too much work for me." Vince cocked an eyebrow.

"An automatic Cadillac Escalade is too much work for someone whose regular ride is a '90 Skyline GT-R? For real?"

"I can park the Skyline anywhere. I can turn the Skyline on a dime. I can make the Skyline whip donuts. I can make the Skyline spin out and still end up where I want it. With the four wheel drive the Skyline has the best manners of any 1000 horsepower vehicle I've ever been behind the wheel of. Without drastic modifications to the all wheel drive, the rear end finds it very hard to step out of line. I've done all that crazy stuff so many times that it's not effort anymore. It's just instinct. Getting that fucking boat into one parking bay is still an effort every time. I'm constantly scared I'm going to back over a pet, or a kid on a bike. You can't see anything less than 6 foot tall in the rearview."

"So at least you wouldn't back over me," Vince said, trying a joke.

"Don't bet on it," she quipped back. "We ain't anywhere near ok with each other for me to promise you that I wouldn't at least try. Driving it right over the Maxima has some appeal as well. Bet in low range 4x4 it'd crawl right up the hood." She wasn't even able to find it in herself to feel guilty when he turned even paler than he was.

"My poor car hasn't done anything to you!"

"No, but you have. You never took enough time to get to know me well enough to know if I'm the type of girl who keys fenders and slashes leather seats and tires. Let alone drives tons of American heavy metal onto ridiculously tuned Nissans."

"I think I do know you well enough to know that isn't you. Destroying my clothes I can imagine. Kicking the crap out of me face to face, oh hell yes. But destroying a nice car, no matter whose it is, isn't your style."

"Maybe you do know me better than I thought you did then." He looked visibly relieved when she confirmed she wasn't about to go pour gasoline all over his interior and strike a match.

"I'd like to think I was starting to."

"Not well enough, obviously. Practically crawling down racer chaser Barbie's throat right in front of me was the ultimate way to end things to inspire all kinds of evil revenge plans and I'd have thought even you'd have been clever enough to figure that one out. And now you're all drugged up, weak as a newborn kitten and about to be totally at my mercy for the foreseeable future. I wouldn't describe you as the sharpest tool in the shed at any point of that scenario."

"I wouldn't call me the sharpest tool in the shed in any scenario. I know it was stupid. I didn't know how to take it back and I never figured it out. That'd be why I never called you, that'd be why I tried to get you to come to me. I didn't know how to take it back and obviously I still don't."

"You can't take it back. There's this huge 'what would have been' hanging over us now, and now that you've all done this and gotten caught at it, not only will we never know what might have been, we'll never even know what we could have made of it all if you'd come after me straight away. If you'd called straight away. Not left it two years and decided you couldn't even man up enough to come to me, you had to try and find a way to make me come to you, even though it was clear to everyone else that it was your move to make, not mine."

"So now what?" he asked, after taking a moment's reflection on everything they've said. He couldn't argue with anything she'd said. He'd played it all wrong.

"Now, we forget about what might have been and try to learn to be ok with what will be I guess. But I need time to wrap my head around it. I'm not going to just forgive you and turn the other cheek. I'm really not going to when you haven't even asked for forgiveness, or tried being actually sorry for anything. So now, all we can do is find out if we can be ok with what comes." She sighed. "I guess I should go say good night to Jesse and head for home."

"You sound like you don't really want to." Tempest shrugged.

"I don't. I'm tired, and it's late. Driving home in the dark to an empty house that isn't even mine isn't high on my list of priorities but I can't keep sleeping in the hospital, least of all in here. Eventually someone but Martha is going to walk in and see it, and tell the wrong person and we don't need that cop any more interested. Besides that I'm off to see Jesse's dad tomorrow and I know I'm going to need a good night's sleep before that."

"Why do you need to go see Jesse's dad?"

"To try and make sure Jesse has someone to look after him when he gets out of the hospital. Calvin is almost due to be released so I'm hoping he'll need somewhere to stay for a piece and if so he can find somewhere with Jess. He can't stay alone."

"I guess not." Vince looked her way. "So, I'll see you tomorrow?" He was too unsure of things between them after the things she'd said to take it for granted.

"Yeah, at some point, in the afternoon most like. Tell Bryce that I said that if I ever find myself about to take his orders on when and where I sleep, I'll fucking off myself when you see him would you? He got out the door too quick earlier for me to tell him myself." Vince laughed, he couldn't help it.

"You always did have to have a smart ass retort to everything."

"Nothing much has changed."

"Not at all." He watched as she stood up. "Don't go, stay here." Where it came from he didn't know. His words checked her, and she stood with her back to him for a few moments like she didn't know what to do. She turned back to him.

"I would if I could, but it'd be seriously foolish." She took in the weary lines around his eyes that hadn't been there the last time they'd known each other, a mere two years previous. "It's only for another couple days then you're out of here. I'm going to go say night to Jess then I'm headed for the fort." Vince nodded and she left, knowing if she went close enough to touch him, and if he touched her back, she wasn't going anywhere. She would end up sleeping in her clothes in his hospital bed with him again, and she was right when she said it couldn't keep happening if they weren't going to end up being closely watched. She said good night to Jesse and drove to the fort like she'd said she would. She chose to sleep in Vince's bed in the basement again. It was as close as she could safely come to sleeping with him and she knew she'd never get any sleep at all if she felt like she was on her own.


	19. TShirt

AN: These are just a couple silly song drabbles because I still can't write the part to join this to the much longer, more dramatic part I have written that is much in the future from the 'now'. I know there isn't much to them, but I've decided to post them anyway, to give some insight to how they felt in the aftermath. Enjoy.

T-Shirt

"**Nothin feels right when Im not with you. Sick of this dress and these Jimmy Choos. Takin them off 'cause I feel a fool, try'na dress up when I'm missin' you. Imma step out of this lingerie. Curl up in a ball with something Hanes. In bed I lay, with nothing but your T-shirt on."**

_Gonna be late!_

_She tossed the last dress she'd tried on onto the growing pile of discarded clothes on her floor. The closet was mostly empty, the pile of clothes worth a small fortune on the floor was sky high._

_She was supposed to be going out with her friends. They were likely all already sat at Melody's, having a few drinks and waiting on her. She couldn't decide if she wanted to go at all anyway. Last time she's been out dancing, he'd been there. Now he wasn't and nothing felt right, doing it alone. Even though she'd done everything alone and been alright with that until two weeks 4 months ago had turned her world upside down. She wasn't sure she remembered how to have a good time without him._

_She studied herself critically, and wasn't sure if she liked how her dress fit, even though she'd worn it tens of times before to compliments every time. She turned to the side and realized she hadn't been so thin last time, and mused she didn't even remember the last thing she'd eaten. But now she felt foolish wearing what was supposed to be a fitted garment which now hung off her front and rear like a shapeless sack._

_She took the dress off and tossed it onto the growing pile of designer clothes on her floor, and pulled off her mile high heels, unable to stop herself musing that if Mia knew she owned Jimmy Choos and didn't bring them with her, she'd find herself tied down being dressed up in every designer item she owned. Her closet was likely Mia's fantasy come true, full of designer items which were evidence of a girlie fetish few people knew she had, and which was one of many expensive habits she worked herself ragged to support._

_Her breath caught on a sob as she tore the rest of her clothes off, La Perla undergarments joining the pile on the floor, and pulled on her guilty secret, the tank top she'd stolen out of his room when she'd gathered her things on the last day. The sob won and she curled up in a ball in her bed, pulling the duvet over her head. _

_She felt her dog jump on the bed, heard him snuffling around the top of the blanket trying to get to her, so she lifted the corner and he crawled under, curling up in front of her and she buried her face into the fur of his ruff, sobbing brokenly. _

_Trying to get dressed up and go out like nothing was wrong made her feel like such a fraud. Nothing felt right about it, going out alone, knowing he wasn't in the club, knowing he wouldn't be waiting for her when she got back. Knowing she had no desire to pick up any guy she met, no matter how good looking he was. Knowing she would just end up drunk and broken down, instead of alone and broken down. Even trying to go shopping for something new to wear out had ended in disaster when she couldn't even muster energy to leave her apartment. Even though shopping used to be one of the many things she was enthusiastically passionate about. Ever since she changed her life so she could fit in designer clothes, that was._

_She ignored her cell as it rang and rang, knowing it would be her girls, wondering where she was when she said she'd show up. _

"_I miss you," she cried into her dog's fur, and he turned his head to lick her face, almost like he was saying he knew she did, but that _he_ would stay with her no matter what. She held him tighter, and eventually cried herself to sleep._

She awoke from her dream with a start, instinctively feeling for the dog and finding him not there. And even though she'd found _him_ again, memories of what it had been like to go through the aftermath of their first break up had her sat up in shock, panting for breath in the night. What had she been thinking, giving him a chance to do that to her again?


	20. If You Ever Come Back

If You Ever Come Back

**And if you're out there trying to move on, but something pulls you back again.**

**I'm sitting here trying to persuade you like you're in the same room. And I wish you could give me the cold shoulder. And I wish you could still give me a hard time. And I wish I could still **_**wish**_** it was over.**

_He often found himself talking to her, even though she was long gone. Especially when he found himself drunk in the back yard, sat all alone. He had to be alone. Otherwise the rest of the team would all think he'd finally snapped and gone round the twist with how much he talked to 'himself'. Even though he was actually talking to her, as if she was still right there beside him. As if he hadn't driven her half a continent away. As if talking to himself, or even directly to her, could change anything now, after what he'd done._

"_So if you lied to Jesse when you told him you were ok, why don't you tell me the truth? I lay on your side of the bed every night just trying to get some sleep but I only make it worse for myself because it still smells like your shampoo. Ever since the way you left, how we left it, I don't sleep. I haven't slept yet, and it's been four damn months T."_

"_If you're trying to move on, stop. I'm talking to myself trying to convince you like you were here for Christ sake. You can't do this to us. You're driving me crazy."_

"_I wish you were still here to get angry and give me the cold shoulder, still here giving me a hard time. I know I have a hell of both coming for what I did. But you can't ever get yours back from 3000 miles away!"_

"_Damn I wish I could still wish it was over. That I hadn't managed to end things so well. The one damn thing in my messed up life I ever didn't fuck up is the one thing I wish I could take back and I did it too well to manage. And even if wishing is a waste of time, and even if you're out there never thinking about me, I still kept everything just the way you left it. The key is still taped exactly where I told you it always was so you can get in if you show up and no one is here or no one hears you. I have nothing worth stealing that you haven't already taken anyway."_

"_Leon and Dom tell me to forget it all the time, that you're never coming back. But people are wrong all the time. People thought the world was flat, but how wrong were they?"_

_He looked down at the scrap of black in his hand which was not clutching a bottle of Jack Daniels, what was left of her destroyed tank top. The only thing of hers he had left to provide a tangible link of he and her._

"_I know I'm not worth coming back for, but I wish you'd do it anyway."_

"_If its the fights we had you remember, or the little things about us you miss, remember that no matter what, you can always come back. Come back to me. I'll be just like you were never gone if you ever come back."_

_He stood on a sigh and dragged back into the house and down the stairs into his room. He wasn't interested in company, unless it was hers, and since she wouldn't even say hello to him on the phone, he reckoned that meant he was going to be alone and lonely for a long time. He took another long drink of neat Jack. Maybe if he got drunk enough, tonight would be the night he finally got some sleep. _

He came to with a gasp. It'd been a very long time since he'd remembered those first few months without her. All the pain and neat shots of hard liquor trying to drown what was left of his feelings. What he'd put himself through trying to get over it. If he'd put her through even a small fraction of what he'd put himself through, how could there be any hope for their future in the first place? Was going with her the worst mistake he'd ever made, not because of the danger if they were caught, but because of the danger he was putting her in that he'd hurt her, and by proxy himself, again?

The haze of morphine pulled him back under a short time later and his last conscious thought was that at least with the amount of drugs in his system, he'd never be aware he'd remembered those conversations he used to have with her when she wasn't there.


End file.
